


The Capture of The Vapor

by asingerofsongs, MayGlenn



Series: Stars and Skies [16]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Anal Sex, Asexual Rey (Star Wars), Asexuality Spectrum, Badass Finn, Badass Rey, Bondage, Bottom Finn, Bottom Poe Dameron, Canon-Typical Violence, Covert Operation, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dude in Distress Poe Dameron, Edgeplay, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Fantastic Racism, Finn is the Resistance, Fluff and Smut, Handcuffs, Handwaving Physics, Hurt/Comfort, Kink Negotiation, Light BDSM, M/M, Maz Kanata is the Hero We Deserve, Minor Injuries, Multi, Poe Dameron Hurts So Prettily, Polyamory Negotiations, Protective Finn, Safe Sane and Consensual, Sex Toys, Stormtrooper Culture, Stormtrooper Rebellion, Switching, Threesome - F/M/M, We keep ending on sweet life-affirming sex scenes idk, stormtrooper recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-08 05:11:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 56,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7744606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asingerofsongs/pseuds/asingerofsongs, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayGlenn/pseuds/MayGlenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“This is blackmail!” Finn cried, slamming a fist on the briefing room table, making the holoprojection flicker. “You can’t dangle Poe and Rey in front of me like this when you’ve already sent them off to get captured—<em>again</em>,” he added in a growl.</p><p>Leia held up a hand. “I know that’s what it looks like, but I assure you, Finn, the plan is well worth the risk. If we cannot get this technology out of the First Order’s hands, Poe and every pilot I have is going to die the next time we send them up, no matter how good they are. Poe is…aware of the risks, and he trusts my judgment. And Rey helped formulate the plan.”</p><p>"General, you <em>do</em> remember those two idiots were the ones who planned a <em><a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6928369">day trip to Mortis</a></em>, right?" Finn groaned. </p><p>...</p><p>  <em>Or the one where Poe, Finn, and Rey take on the First Order, tangle with Phasma and Kylo, make some new friends, and talk about their relationship. Handcuffs are involved.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“You wanted to see me, General?” Poe said, standing at attention. It was rare that he stood at attention, but it was rare that Leia invited him into her private quarters.

Okay, it was actually never. Except for that one time she had allowed him and Finn to use her bathtub, he had never been in here. It felt—either very warm or very suffocating, he couldn’t tell which. And what in the name of the Force was Rey doing here?

“Rey?” he said.

“Poe,” Rey replied, her mind connecting instantly with his, a comforting, familiar presence.

Leia cleared her throat. “Poe, Rey has a mission from Luke, and I wanted to offer this to you first, because I knew you would be—not best-suited for the job, necessarily, but that you probably wouldn’t let anyone else take it.”

That didn't sound reassuring. Poe set his jaw. _Once more into the breach…_ He glanced at Rey, whose mind more than her eyes betrayed deep reservations that made him edgy. “You’re probably right,” Poe told Leia, trying to ease Rey’s fears as much as he could. “What is it?”

Leia gave him a stony look. “Your last mission intercepted information about a new weapon the First Order is rumored to have—cloaking technology,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“We need to capture that technology before the First Order can equip their entire fleet with it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Which is why…I need you to go on a routine patrol.” She held out a holodisk, and it projected an interstellar map. “With Rey.” Leia winced, looking like it was already too much—or else far, far too little.

Poe waited for more, but nothing more was forthcoming. He glanced at Rey, who looked nervously at her shoes. That stung, somehow. 

“And…that’s all?”

“That’s all I can tell you, if you take the job.”

“Oh,” he said.

 _Ohh_ , he thought. _Kriff me_.

“Do…you still want the job?” Leia pressed.

 _No_. Poe didn’t like flying blind, and he liked even less knowing there was A Plan he was out of the loop of. And that could only mean one thing.

He was bait.

He was going to be captured.

Kylo Ren might be there. The plan hinged on him _not knowing the plan_ , because Kylo Ren would be there, Kylo Ren could find out the plan by plucking it from his brain and he did _not_ want to go through that again… 

In a moment of panic Poe scrambled to think of someone else who could do this, anyone, but imagining Snap or Karé or anyone else in Kylo Ren’s clutches made him—

He should probably stop trying to guess the plan, he decided. The less he knew, the better, and he had probably already guessed too much.

Rey bristled, as the knot of Poe’s fear across their bond became tangible, almost painful.

 _Poe, it’s not like that,_ he could almost feel Rey saying, but he ground his teeth and ignored her.

It was exactly like that.

 _I don’t like this any more than you do_ , she added. That at least felt honest, and he relaxed somewhat. _But I’m going to be with you._

That more than anything helped Poe to relax.

“I’ll take the job,” he said.

“You have good instincts, Poe. _Follow them_ ,” Leia said. Poe nodded. “You should leave right away.”

Poe worried his lip. “But, um, Finn?” Finn wasn’t technically Active Duty yet, though he had of course passed the officer exams—not that Poe wanted to put Finn in danger, too. At any rate they needed to let him know they were leaving.

“I’ll tell him where you two are. You’ll be back together within twenty-four hours, I guarantee that.”

So they couldn’t even say goodbye.

“I’ll hold you to that,” Poe said, taking the disk with the coordinates and nodding at Rey, who scurried to his side. He could tell she was as scared as he felt, which was oddly comforting. 

“May the Force be with you.”

“It better be with someone,” Poe said, and was gone, before his mind could make any more guesses.

Major Brance was standing by the prepped B-Wing fighter, waiting for him, which was unusual. “Everything checks out. You are all ready to go, Commander,” he said, saluting him weakly.

Poe narrowed his eyes. “Where’s BB-8?”

Major Brance’s face betrayed everything. He was a terrible liar. “This is just a _routine scouting patrol_ , Commander.”

Poe swallowed a retort through the cloying fear. This mission was getting worse all the time. Gods, and he was taking Rey with him. What if something happened to _both_ of them? What would Finn think? What would Finn do?

But Poe knew the risks. Rey wouldn’t have gotten him into this—here he was, blaming his fiancée for this, some future husband he was turning out to be—yet somehow he felt that Rey had already forgiven him—if there wasn’t a high payoff or minimal danger.

Poe was going to guess “high payoff.”

And Leia would have let them say goodbye if it were a risk. Wouldn’t she?

…

“This is blackmail!” Finn cried, slamming a fist on the briefing room table, making the holoprojection flicker. “You can’t dangle Poe and Rey in front of me like this when you’ve already sent them off to get captured— _again_ ,” he added in a growl.

Leia held up a hand. “I know that’s what it looks like, but I assure you, Sergeant, the plan is well-worth the risk. If we cannot get this cloaking technology out of the First Order’s hands, Poe and every pilot I have is going to die the next time we send them up, no matter how good they are. Poe is…aware of the risks, and he trusts my judgment. And Rey agreed to this.”

"General, you _do_ remember those two idiots were the ones who planned a _day trip_ _to Mortis_ ," Finn said, though he immediately felt horrible about speaking badly about Poe and Rey behind their backs. He was frightened that they'd gone, and frightened that they wouldn't succeed, and he wasn't there to _help_ them and temper their recklessness, and if he didn't stay _angry_ he was going to panic.

"What if they get _captured_?" he demanded, looking from the General to her brother, whose face was every bit as impassable as his sister's.

For the first time in front of Finn, Leia looked nervous. She glanced at her brother. "That—that would be an unfortunate, but not _unplanned-for_ , turn of events," she said slowly. "They’re taking an unmarked starship, so they won’t necessarily be a suspicious target. Still, the First Order will likely take them aboard, and they should be able to overpower any guards and complete their mission."

“If they run into trouble, Finn, you can be sure we'll be on them," Karé promised. “Iolo and me are in that TIE we picked up, with General Skywalker, and we’ll take down a scout and take its place to get aboard without being noticed.”

“The, ah, contact point is in an asteroid field,” Iolo supplied, though he couldn’t quite look Finn in the eye. No one really could.

“Our intelligence on the vessel carrying this technology is extremely detailed,” Major Brance said. “We even have identification codes for the individual TIE fighters, so the, ah, ‘switcheroo’ should go smoothly. The vessel in question can operate on a skeleton crew, and the Order will want to keep this quiet, and according to Sergeant Finn's reports, they lost over a million soldiers at Starkiller, so a small crew is likely. The _Vapor_ requires a minimum of four pilots, and a small guard is all that is expected. That should mean, once inside, they will meet with little resistance. No more than a dozen.”

“We believe Kylo Ren is onboard,” Luke said finally, speaking for the first time. “It’s the next step in Rey's training. She must face him again. It happens to coincide with an important mission for the Resistance."

Finn stared, gaping, at Leia, who was still looking at Luke, who was watching Brance. No one else was looking at him, and he growled. "You mean to tell me the entire plan is actually to get them captured?" he asked, "So Rey can—can fight Kylo Ren by _herself_? They both know he's on that ship and they're walking right into this?" he asked. And they'd agreed to it anyway? He was going to throttle them both, just as soon as he was sure they were back safe and sound.

"Er," Luke said, at least managing the decency to look at Finn this time. "Poe didn’t...know."

Leia tried to salvage how bad this sounded: "He...guessed a lot, I think, but he doesn’t know about this part of the plan.” It wasn't that they didn't trust Poe, but any non-Force user couldn't be expected to fight Kylo Ren on that level. "It's just a precaution, in the event that Kylo Ren tries to extract information about the current operation. Not that we expect Poe to be in that situation, since Rey will be there. Nor are we _planning_ on their capture, Sergeant. Your affianced are very capable operatives, more than a match for a skeleton crew, if they have surprise on their side."

Finn was quiet for about three seconds, and the room was still while he tried not to yell at his General and Luke and everyone else in the room.

"ARE YOU KRIFFING KIDDING ME?!" he practically bellowed, incapable of holding it in a moment longer. They had _no idea_ that they'd just been sent into a trap—much less one set by their own people. "General, you _know_ what Ren did to Poe last time. And what he tried to do to Rey!" he said, his voice practically pleading. Their nightmares were still vivid in his mind.

"And Rey handled it before. She can handle it again—for both of them," Luke assured him, and then he lowered his voice like he and Finn were the only two in the room. "They are _strong_ , Finn. We are protecting them by withholding information."

"But—both of them are valuable enough not to be executed on sight," Leia added. "And we'll get to them before anything can happen."

Brance jumped on the next short silence to finish his briefing: “Once onboard, the teams, in stolen stormtrooper and TIE fighter pilot gear, will infiltrate the _Vapor_. General Skywalker and Rey will eliminate or apprehend Ren, while the rest of the team will take the bridge and bring the ship back, where the plans will be downloaded and the vessel itself possibly scavenged,” Brance finished. "Oh, and, ah, free any prisoners that may or may not have been captured," he added, unable to not make it sound like it was a hasty addendum.

Finn continued to gape at all of them, but eventually he managed to shut his mouth and stop making an ass of himself. He paced several short steps away, looked up at the ceiling, and then went back to his seat (the one he hadn't sat in for several minutes). He gave Leia a hard look.

"Put me back on active duty. Now," Finn growled, only to startle as the door slammed open and a very angry BB-8 whirled into the room.

[I'm going too!] they shrieked, and then rolled over to Luke and Leia, slamming none-too-gently into their shins. [You sent them!] they continued, [Without _me_!] They made some rude noises they'd no doubt learned from R2-D2 and then rolled to Finn's feet, somehow managing to look angry without doing anything but rocking sharply forward and back.

"Sergeant!" Brance shouted at Finn’s demand, and Iolo and Karé had the decency to flinch, but Leia raised a hand.

"I—thought you might say that," she said, knowing that if Finn was ever going to trust her again, she had to trust him. She had by no means figured out what she would say to Dr. Kalonia, since she hadn’t exactly cleared him yet and ‘his Force Bond with a Jedi will manage his flashbacks’ wasn’t exactly grounded in science. But talking to Harter was her own problem. "And I can do one better.” She pinned a piece of metal to his jacket. “Got your exam scores in, and, well, you currently hold our record for highest marks.” She smiled briefly. “I’ll wait until you’ve left to tell Pava. In the meantime, consider yourself a commissioned officer on active duty, Lieutenant Finn. There is room for one more in the TIE with the Captains and my brother.”

BB-8 honked again.

"And BB-8. Though we don't exactly have stormtrooper armor that will fit you, my friend," she said kindly.

BB-8 assured her that no one would see them coming and live to tell about it.

Finn hadn't expected to get away with his demand quite so easily, and may have stared at the General for a long moment as what she had just done sank in.

"If we know they have been captured," Luke said, gesturing at the map with his mechno arm, "Finn and I can make our way to the brig, which is here, while Kun and Arana infiltrate the bridge. I'm fairly confident once I'm onboard that Ren will focus his attention on me and not be a threat to either Rey or Dameron."

Finn nodded, refocusing. There was still a plan, such as it was, to clarify, and he turned his attention back to Luke. "Do we have a backup plan?" he asked, just in case something went wrong.

Brance shoved a datapad at Finn, but Luke took it for him. "We _are_ the backup plan," Luke said, quietly.

"May the Force be with us," Leia said, and when they were dismissed, Finn led the way to the hangar.

"Thank you for being angry with me," Luke told Finn when they were alone, Karé and Iolo a few steps behind them. "Your feelings are natural, righteous, even. The soundness of our plan has nothing to do with its _rightness_ , and—we forget that, sometimes. It shouldn't have to be your job to act as the conscience of the Resistance, but..." he sighed and shrugged and offered the datapad, with complete specs of the plan. "I'm glad you are. We _do_ have Chewie who will be tailing us, but if things go truly badly, there's no way the _Falcon_ can take on the  _Vapor_ , so."

In the hangar, a corporal from supply was issuing Karé and Iolo First Order flightsuits, sleek and black, and he held out stormtrooper armor and blasters to first Luke, and then to Finn.

Finn took the armor, turning it over in his hands with some trepidation, like it might bite him. He checked the mask, almost worried it would show remains of its previous owner—but it was spotless. Luke was watching him, he realized, and he shook off the unwelcome feeling of familiarity at handling the armor. Putting it on was a matter of moments, of fastening familiar buckles and settling pieces where they were supposed to rest.

He hated how comfortable it was.


	2. Chapter 2

Poe was grateful Rey was letting him fly. He would be gnawing his leg off if she didn't. He was _scared_.

"You're scared," Rey said, for about the third time.

"I'm not. I mean—" But of course she could feel his emotions—and he could feel hers. "You're scared, too."

"This is a reconnoiter, Poe. There's nothing to be afraid of," Rey said, attempting to sound firm, though he could tell her voice was shaking. He snaked a hand behind him to squeeze her arm.

"Rey, look, I know what's happening. We're bait. The First Order is going to capture us and you must have a plan because otherwise we would have said goodbye to Finn and I'm cool dying for the Resistance but I'd really like to be allowed to say g—"

"The plan is for me to protect you," Rey interrupted, "No one is dying, except anyone who tries to harm one of us." she knew Poe could tell just how much of this was bravado, but he would also know she wasn't lying—she would kill to protect him.

"Great, so we _are_ getting captured," Poe grumbled. "Good thing that even though you can see my mind I can still trick you into giving me information the old fashioned way. Now tell me what the gods-damned plan is!"

"Okay!" Rey said, trying to calm him. "We're...the _plan_ is not to get captured, but we're going to intercept them and—it’s _likely_..."

Poe took his hands off the yoke to take off his helmet and tug on his hair. "Fuck. Fuck, why did I agree to this? And we think Ren will be there?" This was not good. He was not okay.

" _Poe_ ," Rey said forcefully, taking Poe's hands and disentangling them from his hair. "Listen to me." She crowded into his space so he had no choice but to pay attention to her. "I'll be there. He won't harm you. I know what I'm doing this time, and I can stop him. I can protect both of our minds. I would never have let them even _ask_ you if I thought I couldn't," she told him fiercely.

Poe was surprised to find that Rey had swung herself around the back-to-back seats and was in his lap, grasping his hands. He blinked, and frowned, but struggled only briefly before he let her in. “I know,” he said, as his breathing slowed, though his heart was still pounding. “Sorry. I just—”

“I know. Scares me, too. But I can handle it. We’ll handle it.” They were both picturing being in that chair, with Kylo Ren bending over them, and saw the other’s fear reflected in their eyes.

Poe chewed the inside of his lip. “Okay. Okay, but—you can’t fight him if they—okay,” he said, in planning mode. “If they tractor beam us, they’ll ion-canon the ship once we’re onboard, and probably tase us before they try extraction. Can you—I don’t know, deflect something like that?” Poe liked the thought of Rey in that interrogation chair even less than he liked the thought of him in it. “And if you’re going to protect us, I’m assuming you need to be conscious. We can…okay, hang on, new plan. We can probably ground you with something, and you can hide, so they don’t know you’re even here. Hey! We have a carbon-fiber blanket!”

Rey looked carefully to Poe, loathe to let him face stormtroopers and Ren essentially alone and unconscious. "What about you? I said I'd protect you, not let you get tased," she asked, although she couldn't exactly come up with another plan, either.

Poe wanted to put on a brave face, but she could feel his emotions, anyway, so he squirmed uncomfortably. "I can handle getting tased,” he said. “If you're unconscious, you can't protect me, not from what I'm worried about," he pointed out, and took a careful breath. "I'll be okay. Our backup plans have backup plans, right? Leia wouldn't have—"

An alert sounded, and Rey leapt off his lap and back into her seat. 

"Shit, have we got company already?" Poe growled, as an enemy contact pinged on his long-range scanners. "Wait. _Oh my gods_ , who set these scanners to short-range? Kriff! This better have been part of the plan. The plan I don’t know about. Okay, the blanket's in the medkit. There should be room to hide under your seat. Shield your mind or—or whatever you need to do to hide from Ren. _And_ we're entering an asteroid field, great," he said, jinking suddenly. "First Order better have Wedge Kriffing Antilles flying for them if they're following me in here."

Rey opened the medkit, unrolled the blanket, and sealed the kit back up and replaced it. It was a good thing she had spent her early life wriggling into tight spaces, because this was a doozy, and she had to remove a panel and a few pipes and stow them between the seats (hopefully enough out of the way as to not draw attention) before she could get beneath her seat and hide there, wrapped in the carbon-fiber blanket.

A hollow scream echoed on their port and stern. "We got TIEs! Shit, never mind, I'm here alone, who am I talking to?" Poe reminded himself.

"Should I get on the guns?" Rey asked, her hair staticky from the blanket. 

"No. No.” Poe forced a derisive laugh. “They can’t touch me." He swung around into a sideways slip, making the TIEs arc past, but something shimmered in front of him. "Fuck!"

"What?" came a muffled shout from beneath his seat.

"I'm guessing the thing I can barely see but my sensors can't read is the cloaking tech we were sent to find—stop talking to me! I'm trying to forget you're here!"

And if that _was_ a starship—a gunship of some caliber, at least—then Poe had definitely been swept into tractor beam range by the flanking TIES. Poe felt the controls grow sluggish on him, and he had to fly even closer to fire a few ion canons back up where he guessed the beam was coming from, desperate to break free. He barely managed to spin out and circle around where the gravity wells at least told him there was something he shouldn't fly straight into. Green laser blasts flickered off his shields, harmless, and adrenaline punched through him. They were going to get away! They were—

Not _supposed_ to get away.

Leia said to trust his instincts.

One jink too slow, knocking him back into tractor beam range. He had to make it look real, didn't he? If Poe could get Rey on board, give her the benefit of surprise, she could complete the mission.

At least, he thought, as the ship stopped responding to his commands in the tractor beam and a few ion pulses, it was something of an ego-boost to know he was irresistible bait. He was just beginning to see the hangar of a First Order ship materializing around him, and then there was a bright flash of light, blinding pain through his arms and legs, and finally darkness.

…

"Got him!" Iolo whooped in his delightful drawl, as the TIE exploded behind the asteroid, just as planned. "Get us on in there, Karé!"

"Way ahead of you," Karé said, pressing through the cloud of shrapnel to take the TIE’s place, swinging around the large asteroid to settle alongside the other TIE, chasing after Poe and Rey's B-Wing. "Master Skywalker?!"

Luke was pressing two fingers to his brow. "The frequency is 347-228. Your serial number was JD-3087." Luke glanced to Finn. "You didn't know them, did you?"

Finn looked at Luke, taken aback by the question, and tried to think. "I...I don't remember," he said, and immediately felt something like guilt. "There were so many of us," he added, as if that made it any better. But he didn’t know too many pilots, so, probably not.

Luke nodded. "Nonlethal takedowns, when we get in there, then? Give them a chance to defect? We always need more Resistance." He squeezed Finn's shoulder from where they were hidden in the hold, and smiled.

The com crackled as Karé finally found the right frequency. "Juds? Jink? Hostiles are secure. I've been trying to hail you. Your coms KRUBAR'd or what?"

"Uhh..." Iolo tried, glancing down at Finn in a panic.

Finn snorted softly in amusement. "Beyond all repair," he answered back, "It'll have to be replaced or sent to surplus." The com popped and crackled and Finn winced.

"Better get back here double time, or they'll send _you_ to surplus," the voice answered.

"Choke on my reclamated ass," Finn responded, to a soft background chorus of _'ooooh_!' and some laughter that was hurriedly cut off as the static crackled into nothing.

Karé and Iolo both gaped at Finn as the com clicked off. "Okay, I know you were speaking Basic just then but—"

"What the kriff was that?!" Karé demanded.

Even Luke looked a little concerned.

"Um...they asked if the com was broken," Finn answered, as if that explained everything. "It's just how we talk. Talked. KRUBAR'd means Kylo Renned Beyond All Repair." But the pilots still looked confused, maybe a little alarmed. "They won't think to question us now," he said.

Karé and Iolo had heard what Kylo Ren did to Poe—and Rey—and he had to be a monster if he was in charge of the whole First Order…did the stormtroopers actually _joke_ about him?

“And what’s this about reclamation—”

"Okay, we'll run the perimeter with them and then go inside at the same time. Shouldn't be too long and we'll be inside."

“No, seriously, I gotta know. Do stormtroopers eat dead stormtroopers?!” Iolo yelped, and Finn laughed.

“It’s a _joke_ , Iolo…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stormtrooper culture jokes stolen from [this Tumblr post](http://maeglinthebold.tumblr.com/post/145400524470/mooglemisbehaving-kyraneko). 


	3. Chapter 3

Rey curled tight under her chair and held her breath as the Starfighter was dragged into the larger gunship. There was the clanging of a ladder being slammed against the hull, and then the scraping of metal as the canopy was shorn off. She almost jumped out to stop them when someone grabbed Poe and hauled him out, but if she tried to help him now, she wouldn't be able to keep them both safe later, so she dug her fingernails into her palms, clutched her lightsaber, and held her breath.

But it was almost too much when she heard first Phasma's, then Ren's voices, muffled outside the ship, and her concentration almost snapped, revealing her location. She heard Ren pacing restlessly around the tiny Starfighter, like he could sense that he couldn’t sense her, while they hauled Poe away, and Rey could have jumped out right then and attacked him—maybe she should have—but she didn’t.

Cursing herself for a coward, Rey shrunk back to avoid him, clearing her mind.

…

Poe came to as cold metal clinked around his wrists, and he jerked his head up. "What—who—whoa, fuck!" he cried as the chromed grill of his nightmares was staring him in the face, and he yanked out of the hold on his arms and collapsed to the floor.

Kylo Ren stood over him, his dark robes swooshing.

Poe groaned as the stormtroopers hauled him upright again. "We have to stop meeting like this," he managed.

Ren was silent. Poe's wisecracks seemed to confuse him. Finally, he turned. "Take him to the brig. I'll deal with him there."

The ship wasn't that large—not like the _Finalizer_ , where he felt he had walked for days between the prison bloc and the hangar, both ways—and he was surprised when he was thrown suddenly into a small cell holding cell.

"Back to your posts," Ren said, and the stormtroopers seemed only too glad to do so.

Poe scrambled to his feet. "You need those guys to go back to latrine duty or something? Must be hard to find good work, you know, with your super-weapons being blown up and your stomtroopers defecting, huh?"

Ren waved this off, though he paused just long enough for Poe to know that it had been a good dig. "Do you actually expect me to believe that the best pilot in the Resistance came alone in a B-Wing Starfighter to try to shoot us down?"

"Er—" Poe said, worried that any second Ren was going to start shredding his brain for answers. "Leia’s sent me on missions with worse odds," Poe grinned, far too bravely. "But I trust her. You wouldn't know what that's like, I guess, since you’re trying to pretend you’re not her kid anymore.” He licked his lips, forcing a cruel grin: “I'm a better son, anyw—”

“Shut. Up,” Ren hissed. There was a crackle of the Force around them, and for a terrifying moment Poe thought that Ren was going into his mind again, and he would know everything—but then it felt like his throat was closing up and he choked, unable to breathe. It was weird to think of that as a relief, but it was.

Spots swam before his vision before he slammed back to the floor, gasping as Ren released him. “I’m not here to talk to you about your General.”

When Poe looked up this time, Ren did something that surprised him completely. He took his helmet off.

"Oh gods, it really is you," was all Poe could think to say, because behind the rage-addled eyes and the passage of time, behind that gnarly face-scar that he knew was the mark left on him by Rey, _shit_ that was Ben. It looked like Ben. He could see bits of Leia in him.

It was scarier than any helmet.

Ren crouched down close to him so they were face to face. Poe tried not to look at him. “The scavenger did this to me,” he said. His voice sounded soft, familiar—uncomfortably different from the sound of his voice through the filter.

“I hate to break it to you, but I’m pretty sure your nose was always that huge. That wasn’t her fault.”

Poe didn’t even see the swing as Ren backhanded him, sending him sprawling against the far wall and left him licking a bleeding lip.

“Tell me where she is.”

Poe recoiled, but ground his teeth in defiance. _That_ was at the surface of his thoughts, there was no way he wouldn’t give her away—not when he wanted her, _needed_ her here so badly!

“You cannot keep her from me.”

But—now that the helmet was off, there was something in Ren’s eyes. Something Poe recognized, from long ago. It was almost sad, and almost pathetic. Poe had _hurt_ him already. And, sure, Poe Dameron wasn’t _proud_  that the only weapon he had left to fight a bully were a bully’s weapons, but handcuffed in the brig of an enemy starship, all Poe had was his keen knowledge of Ren’s emotional instability, and his cruelly sharp tongue.

So as soon as he felt that crackle of the Force around him, pressing against his mind, he forced a laugh, like his guess was a great joke: “Hells, you’re in _love_ with her, aren’t you?” he said, and Ren stopped, startled, so Poe knew his guess must be right. “Aw, Ben’s got himself a little crush. Can’t say I blame you, but man, she’s way out of your league.” He wiggled the ring finger where his engagement band rested. “ _And_ she’s taken.” 

Poe knew _that_ look, too. Ren was about to throw a temper tantrum.

…

Ren was easy to follow, if Rey was careful with the Force. Follow the big bleeding angry ball was basically the gist of it. Rey oozed around a corner, walking past a few connecting corridors, where, in her peripheral vision, she caught a glance of a stormtrooper, helmet carried over her arm, and for a moment she turned her head and their eyes met.

"Nothing to see here," the trooper called out, turning back the way she'd come and leaving Rey free to concentrate on Ren. She blinked. That was…strange. It was as if she didn't want Rey to get caught? 

Were there really more stormtroopers like Finn?

Unable to consider this further right now, Rey caught up with Ren just in time to see him fling Poe across the small cell with an animalistic snarl. "Poe!” she cried, as she saw him hit the wall and crumple to the floor, but he was definitely moving and groaning and alive, so she fixed her gaze on Ren. “Leave him alone, you sorry excuse for a Force user," she snarled from the doorway.

"YOU," Kylo Ren suddenly screamed, and only after he had turned suddenly and run off did Poe register that he had heard Rey's voice.

The idiot even left the cell door open. Poe was just staggering to his feet, cataloguing bruises and wondering if anything was broken, when a new helmet appeared.

"Good to see you again, Commander," Captain Phasma purred, filling the whole damn doorway. "I must say the binders are a good look on you."

"Oh, get in line," Poe said, though he also took a step back from the door.

...

"Okay, wait, nonlethal takedowns? How are we supposed to do that?" Karé was complaining.

"Do your best," Luke told her.

"Oh, right, I'll just set my phaser to stun—except this isn't a holonovel, phasers don't exist, and blasters don't have a stun setting!"

[I do! I have a stun setting!] BB-8 hooted, a bit too excitedly for black ops, and circled around Karé's and Iolo’s feet.

"Okay, guess BB-8’s going with you. Head for the Bridge. We'll meet you there," Luke said.

"Where are they?" Finn asked urgently, and Luke paused, turning as if feeling the air, before nodding down the hall to their right. "Rey is... On the move I think. I'll find her. Poe is that way." Without another word, Finn turned and bolted down the hall toward the brig.

"Should we go after Finn? Make sure Poe is alright?" Iolo wondered.

[Yes] BB-8 voted, but their human companions ignored him, predictably (which BB-8 didn’t blame them for, much, since their astromechs were kind of idiots).

"Well, there's no alarm yet, so we could—" Karé said, just as a blaring siren wailed. Iolo couldn't see her face, but he knew she sighed by how her shoulders slumped. "You know, I _knew_ as soon as I said it..."

"Okay, so the bridge."

"Yeah. Finn's got Poe. He gets that scary stormtrooper strength when his darling is in trouble."

Iolo laughed. "Gods, they're really cute together."

"It's disgusting, really."

"Disgustingly sweet," he agreed.

[When you’re done, the bridge is this way] BB-8 pointed out.

"Okay, yeah, let’s go," Karé said, trying the door. To their surprise, it opened before she touched the panel.

A stormtrooper stood on the other side.

"Shit."

...

"SCAVENGER!" Kylo Ren snarled, following Rey up the maintenance hatch she fled into. She could hear his breath, a few turns behind her, and she swung back into the hangar, dropping to the ground and behind some crates.

"FACE ME, REY!" he demanded, following and looking around for her, slashing at crates and equipment like he was hacking through grasses to try to find her.

_How did he know her name?_

Ren stopped, powering down his lightsaber, and lifted his head, like he was sniffing the air. From her hiding spot Rey could see the scar across his face. She felt a sudden desire to give him another, and in that flash of anger he looked right at her and smiled.

"Shit."

Lightsabers sprang from their hands.


	4. Chapter 4

"I heard we had visitors," the stormtrooper facing Karé and Iolo said calmly, and then stepped out of the way, hands raised. "Did you bring FN—Finn? That's his name now?" they asked, and slowly raised their hands further to remove their helmet.

"Yeah, yeah, Finn's here," Iolo blurted out. Both held their blasters up, and BB-8 had their longest and nastiest electroprobe out. "Unless that wasn't what you wanted to hear?"

The stormtrooper half-stepped back. "What is the deal he got? I help you, you don't kill me?" The trooper had dark, curly hair, and deep bronze skin and sharp eyes, and Iolo couldn’t decide if they looked like a girl or a boy: but either way, they looked almost cagey with worry.

Taking a gamble, Karé holstered her weapon. "We're—we have orders for nonlethal takedowns where possible. If you help us, I can promise you'll be treated fairly. Or, even if you just don't tell anyone you saw us. Please."

The stormtrooper stiffened. "Captain Phasma will—"

"Aw shit, _Phasma'_ s here?!" Iolo said, looking around like she might jump out at them suddenly.

"Of course she is. Someone has to keep order, and Kylo Ren's ability to do so is not always reliable," the trooper replied. They watched as Karé and Iolo edged past them, but never moved their hands from their helmet. "They will know that you've found what you came for," they warned the two pilots, nodding to an alarm on the wall. "I'll do what I can."

"Well, we haven't got the plans yet, of course. Alarm tripped a bit sooner than expected," Karé grumbled.

"You—wanna try an escape pod? Or come with us? We can take you hostage, make it look official, if that'll help," Iolo offered with a shrug.

"We need to get to the bridge. Or—somewhere where we can download the technical schematics?" Karé tried.

The stormtrooper seemed to consider this, and nodded, putting their helmet on and resting their hands on top, like they had their hands raised in surrender. "Okay. Take my blaster. I'll lead you to the bridge, but if anyone sees us, I'm your prisoner. And if you're lying and Eight-Seven—Finn—if Finn isn't with you—" here the trooper turned around, and the mask almost scowled, "then I won't need a weapon to kill you."

...

"So, since last time you got to knock me around to try to get Resistance secrets, it's only fair we switch this time, right?" Poe said nervously, backing into a corner and trying to look like a small target.

“You forget. Last time we met you _nearly_ destroyed my starfighter and didn’t bother to finish the job.”

“Ah, well, as long as you don’t think I let you go out of the goodness of my heart.”

"I thought it was your New Republican weakness and incompetence, actually.” She raised her blaster. “And as pleasant as this conversation is, I'm afraid it's now standard procedure to execute prisoners at the first sign of a rescue attempt. We wouldn't want to encourage more of this sort of behavior."

Poe gulped, throwing his hands out in front of him. "Hey, hey, you can't do that! I still have lots of Resistance secrets to not tell you! More stormtroopers to help defect!" But his sass fell flat on Phasma, not at all the way it worked with Ben.

Gods, no, _Ren_. Except he had looked the same. Never grew into his freakishly large ears, or his big-ass buck teeth, apparently...

Oh, gods, was Poe really going to die thinking about Kylo Ren's teeth?

Phasma suddenly pulled her blaster back, muzzle pointed up. "But lucky for you, Commander, I think you'll be of significantly more use as a bartering tool."

"I will—what? Oh...good?" Poe said, flinching back futilely as she grabbed him by the throat. There was a blur and he was pulled against her chest—this woman was seriously huge, which at any other time might have been a turn-on since her chrome fist could literally wrap around his entire neck and he barely came up to her shoulder—and they spun around toward the door with Poe in front of her like a human shield. But for what? Rey was busy with Ren, wasn’t she?

A lone Stormtrooper stood in the door, and for a fleeting, giddy moment, Poe wondered if a Stormtrooper revolution was really happening, that they thought of Poe Dameron as their ticket out, and it was a heart-warming and self-indulgent theory while it lasted.

The muzzle of her blaster was at his temple, and Poe gave only a cursory tug at her wrist, because _hells_ she was strong. "FN-2187. Drop your weapon and submit yourself for reconditioning or you will force the execution of this Resistance scum."

Poe's eyes went wide. "What? _Finn_?! Finn, don't—" Poe tried—wondering how the hell _she_ _knew_ and why the hell no one told him anything about the stupid gods-damned plan and wasn't Finn not cleared for active duty yet so what the kriff was he doing here?—but predictably, her hand tightened around his throat, cutting off his speech.

"Apparently the trash compactors on the Starkiller could use some maintenance," Finn said. "And you should know that I'm either leaving with him or not at all, but you won't be taking me for reconditioning. And while I feel certain Ren will be displeased with our escape, I feel equally certain that it won't compare to the fit he'll throw if you kill two of your three most valuable bargaining chips," he added, not lowering his weapon. "You are also aware of just how good I am with this weapon, and that I will not miss if I even think you are about to harm Poe." He sidled a little closer, staying just outside melee range, blaster still leveled at Phasma's throat and absurdly glad she couldn't see just how freaked out he was. It was one of the few things he hadn't hated about their helmets—no facial expressions to give you away.

"Then we are at an impasse," Phasma said, while Poe continued to choke and splutter, though he could just manage to breathe. He trusted Finn's aim, wanted him to take the shot, but he couldn’t speak now, and neither of them moved. "I would be willing to negotiate a trade," Phasma said after a minute, and Poe almost thought she might have been nervous—except that was absurd.

"Alright, I have an offer," Finn said coldly, "You give me Poe and I will refrain from finishing the job the compactor should have done." He raised the aim of his blaster mere centimeters and barely squeezed the trigger, just enough to shoot as fast as he had ever shot, if he needed to. "Come on, _Captain_ , we don't have all day," he added when she didn't move fast enough. He saw her shift her hold on Poe and took a chance, firing a shot that grazed her shoulder and made her wince at the same time as he yelled "BLASTER!" to Poe, his own blaster still leveled at Plasma. It wouldn't be a good shot, but he wouldn’t miss from here.

Things had begun to gray out around the edges of his vision, but Poe reacted immediately upon hearing blaster shots in case he discovered any of those had ended up in him and he was living on borrowed time. He slammed an elbow up into her helmet, and though he would have a bruise there for days if he got out of this alive, her helmet actually snapped up and off of her head, clattering to the floor, and she must have been startled because Poe wrapped his arms around her blaster and wrested it from her, spinning out to back towards Finn. Finn had a hand on him, hauling him back behind him as he managed to get the gun up, though it was really too big to balance with his hands still cuffed. He was coughing, and too dazed to really know what he was saying, because instead of 'Finn, thank the Maker you're here!' or 'I thought I'd never see you again, buddy, I could kiss you!' Poe said: "Damn, Finn! You didn't tell me your old boss was a blonde bombshell!"

…

Knowledge of just who and what she was facing was a mixed blessing. Rey had none of the confidence born of ignorance that she'd had the first time she'd faced Kylo Ren. She was as angry, now, as she was frightened—he had killed her family. Not only that, but he had had a father, of his own, and he still had a mother, and he had turned his back on being part of his own family, something she would have _killed_ for!

It wasn't _fair._

But life wasn't fair, and this time she knew anger wouldn't help. And Luke had given her enough to go on as far as knowing how to center herself, so she could push some of that down. And she hadn’t forgotten what Obi-Wan had said, either: _Make your attachments your strength, not your weakness_. She had a family. She fought for them. 

It was still not an ideal situation, and yet she stood, facing him, saber at the ready.

"And where is my delightful Uncle? Oh, I know, you came ‘alone,’ just as Dameron came alone. But please, spare me, we both know the _General_ —" he practically spat the word, "did not send you here without backup."

“If you think he is my only backup, you’re in for a surprise,” Rey bit back, teeth bared as she jumped toward him.

Rey and Kylo Ren spun around each other, lightsabers dancing—this time Ren wasn’t injured and Rey knew what she was doing, so everything was faster, harder, near-misses and near-victories. She sprang up onto the wings of a TIE fighter, both ends of the lightsaber spinning as she held the high ground.

“He’s no teacher. Skywalker is weak!”

“Hmm, then how come I’m beating you?” Rey wondered.

Ren roared, slamming his lightsaber at her feet, forcing her to jump as sparks flew. She spun mid-air, like Luke taught her, and landed behind Ren.

“And how come you’re destroying one of your own ships?” she goaded, seeing that making him angry made him sloppy. She felt oddly like Poe was with her, his voice instead of Luke’s telling her that this was Ren's weakness.

And then Kylo Ren was suddenly in front of her, knocking her flat with an almighty Force-push. Apparently making him angry made him more powerful, as well.

Their lightsabers crackled and muscles strained as he bore down on her, red against gold. “Join me,” he snarled, standing over where she crouched, vulnerable below him. Their lightsabers crackled as they tried to push through each other. “Surely you sense it…we’re connected, you and I.”

 _You killed my parents,_ she wanted to snarl, but then this would be personal and ugly for her, too, and Ren was more practiced in letting his anger control him, obviously. So instead: “Eugh. You really know what to say to a girl,” Rey responded, baring her teeth in a grimace. 

He roared again, but Rey feinted and spun out of the way. 

"I can't believe you chose that pilot over me!" Ren shouted, swinging wildly.

"You're forgetting the ex-stormtrooper!" she almost laughed, blocking just as wildly. "Neither of whom are homicidal psychopaths," she pointed out.

That made Ren absolutely foam with rage, and though the next hit jarred her entire body when she blocked, Rey managed to kick one of his knees to put some distance between them. He was still howling, attacking the TIE fighter when he couldn't get at her.

“Still having trouble controlling your emotions, I see, Ben,” said an echoing voice, and Luke appeared across the hangar. When Kylo Ren looked up, Rey swung around the fighter to kick him hard in the face, but he recovered quickly enough that they squared off again.

"Hello, _Master_ Luke," Ren sneered, edging closer to Rey. "The years have not been kind to you, have they?" he asked, and lashed out at Rey, who skipped backwards. "You have made the same mistake I did, trusting _him_ ," he added to Rey, and she snarled at him. "Join me—I will give you proper training, power beyond your dreams—power to protect your precious Resistance." He sidled closer, and Rey narrowed her eyes at him. "Commander Dameron, FN-2187, your precious General, even this old fool...they would be under your protection."

Then he lunged, suddenly, and Rey only had time to bring her lightsaber up in a desperate block as Ren threw her off balance and she fell. She'd let him get too close—she’d stopped to wonder if it was possible to keep her Resistance family safe—and this was it. The cross-bar on Ren's saber was so close it left scorch marks on her shirt.

With a flash and a crackle, she found herself—not dead? Instead of Ren, Luke was standing over her, lashing out with a foot and catching his former student in the knee, sending him reeling backwards. "That's enough, Ben. Your quarrel is with me, and you have targeted my family for long enough," he barked.

…

"Okay, lemme see those hands, everyone, this ain't a drill, it's a stickup," Iolo said, as he and Karé stormed the bridge, BB-8 just behind, the stormtrooper still with her—their?—hands over their head as a hostage.

"We're with the Resistance," Karé said, as the four officers piloting the ship froze. There were no troopers to protect them (anymore—they had been outside the door, and had shot first, so they had been dispatched or tased). "We're here with FN-2187, whose friends call him Finn." That seemed to get a better reaction, as three leapt to their feet, eyes flashing. "We can promise you'll be treated well if you surrender, or we can put you on an escape pod and you can tell your bosses you got away, but if you give us any trouble you will join your troopers on the floor outside. Tell 'em, Punch."

The stormtrooper who was helping them was called Punch, as they found out—PN-7777—and they nodded, trying to encourage their fellow First Order members to surrender. "They're serious. I don't know if Eight-Seven is here, but if he is, then we have nothing to worry about—"

"Traitor!" one of the officers screamed, and drew a weapon.

Iolo pushed Punch back behind him. Karé shot the officer, dropping him.

"Anyone else?" 


	5. Chapter 5

"Really? That's what you decide to comment on?" Finn asked, but he was secretly relieved. If Poe was being...Poe...then he was probably not the worse for wear. Well, not much the worse for wear. He shook his head and returned his focus to Phasma.

"Captain, I want you to know I would be happy to shoot you—we both know you'll come after me until one of us is dead—but it never did sit well with me, shooting an unarmed opponent," he told her as he put Poe behind him and walked backwards out of the cell. "I didn't do it under your orders and I won't do it now."

Poe wasn’t going to argue, though he had the sense to check that the hall was clear before ducking out into it and collapsing against the wall, lowering the blaster. “Lock her in there,” he suggested, but Finn was already keying the door shut, the force field flickering in place. “We can figure out what to do with her…later—”

And then Poe actually dropped the blaster to grab Finn by his stupid sexy plasteel chest plate, wrench his helmet off, and crash their lips together in a grateful-to-be-alive-with-you kiss—fully in view of Phasma, but he didn’t care. “Déjà vu,” he laughed when he pulled away, panting, and he kissed the corner of Finn’s mouth again. “Only I didn’t have the guts to kiss you the last time we met like this. And this already seems like a much better-planned rescue.” He smirked.

"Skywalker, Arana, and Kun are here too," Finn reported, and pulled Poe close to him to hug him tightly again. "I was worried," he told him gruffly, and then inspected the cuffs. "Damn it. No quick-release this time. I’ll get those off of you when we get to the bridge. We can access release codes from the there," he said.

Phasma certainly looked smug, watching the two of them with a cat-caught-by-the-canary-but-plotting-possible-recipes-for-later look.

Finn bared his teeth at her. "I wouldn't want to be you when Ren figures out what happened here," he told her and pulled Poe a bit further away, standing protectively between his pilot and his ex-captain, just in case Phasma found some way to escape.

Poe mused and glanced down the cuffs, for the first time. "You sure we can’t get a code out of her, or a magnetic—" but Finn was already guiding them in the direction of the bridge.

Poe tugged on the binders roughly like they would break under his power, but that was the absolute wrong thing to do, as he went down, dazed and screaming as the fucking things _shocked_ him.

"Fuck!" he cried, and the heard Phasma's laughter behind them.

"Kriff! Poe, are you alright?" Finn asked, dropping to a knee next to Poe.

"We've made some changes since the last time we lost an important prisoner," she called, her voice almost silvery without her helmet.

Poe looked at Finn worriedly.

Finn ignored Phasma and rested his hands on Poe's wrists, next to the cuffs. "Maybe let's not try anything until we're somewhere slightly less dangerous," he suggested, hoping the shock hadn't done any real harm.

“Yeah. Wow. It’s okay, I’m okay,” he insisted, and swore. “Kriffing—” Poe grumbled, but then Finn grasped him gently by the forearms to help him to his feet, and okay, this was giving him serious déjà vu and honestly was getting weird. Him and Finn, a First Order vessel, serious danger, Stormtrooper armor, and handcuffs. You couldn’t roleplay this stuff. Except—

Okay, no. _No_. Poe was not going to get turned on like this in the middle of an _actual mission_. He was a fully grown adult male well in control of his libido and he absolutely was not going to spring his kinky preferences on his affianced just when they’d gotten engaged. He would just deal with the slight haze around everything and channel it into doing his job. His job.

“So, wait, what is my job, exactly?” Poe asked, though he hadn’t meant to ask it quite like that. “I mean, they didn’t tell me what I was supposed to do besides be a very handsome piece of bait. Guessing that worked flawlessly?”

Finn gave him a bemused look. “Yeah. Also they need more pilots on the bridge.” Finn looked down at the binders, and Poe blushed for no kriffing reason. “Er—can you? Pilot with your hands like that?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’d just prefer if we figured out how to get them off sooner rather than later.” But he gave Finn an encouraging grin, and he initiated a kiss because it made him feel more in control of his lust and himself, and: “Well, you’ve seen the schematics of this place. Lead the way, my knight in shining Stormtrooper armor!”

…

“They weren't kiddin'. We really do need four pilots for this kriffing thing. At least three. Ideally five.”

“That’s still pretty standard, Iolo,” Karé replied. “You remember our gunship training, don’t you?”

[I can help!] BB-8 offered, plugging into a port and beginning to shut down their security protocols, making Karé and Iolo’s panels finally light up green. In case they had to beat a hasty retreat, BB-8 began making a backup copy of the cloaking technology codes.

“Thanks, BB-8, that’s a lot easier,” Iolo said, as he familiarized himself with the controls. “This isn’t even piloting—this is glorified computer teching!” Iolo glanced at the three officers, who sat with their hands on their heads, a gun trained on them by Punch. “No offense.”

One of them managed a smile and a small shrug. “None taken,” she said. “Not like I chose this job.”

…

Rey was startled by that phrase—she knew she wasn’t related to Master Luke by blood—and if he was referring to her then he must mean family-by-choice, which Rey thought mattered a lot more, and made her heart swell.

It also worried her. 'You’ve targeted my family for long enough.' Did Luke mean Han? Or had Ren killed someone _else_ important to Luke?

 _You’re thinking too hard: focus on the situation at hand._ That was Finn’s voice—not really his voice, but a part of her that sounded like Finn, a connection to his mind, probably from the Force bond, that allowed her to think what he would think in this situation.

Which was big talk for someone whose otherwise solid judgment turned into a pittance when his friends were threatened, she thought with a laugh. She would have to tease him later.

Rey had rolled away and up, squaring off against Ren, shoulder to shoulder with Luke Skywalker. “Nice work keeping the high ground,” he told her amicably, using a completely different tone for her than he had just used to speak to Ren. “And that leap was incredible. Took me way longer to figure that one out.”

“I have a good teacher,” she told him with a shrug and a smile.

Kylo Ren made a frustrated sound, scoring his lightsaber against the otherwise perfectly polished floor. Apparently, he liked being ignored even less than he liked being made fun of. It made her almost pity him, in the way she pitied all bullies, who were, as a rule, cowards in the face of bullying directed at them.

Not that pity was going to stop her from taking him down, by any means. There were Jakku bullies who took your salvage or your rations or just wanted to push you around, and then there were bullies who were complicit in the destruction of entire star systems.

“Let’s see how he does against two opponents,” Luke said, and sprang forward, surprising Rey as much as Ren with his nimbleness.

…

Finn and Poe made quick but cautious progress towards the bridge. They wound through several corridors and up one lift and found themselves rounding the corner into the bridge, where they nearly got shot by a helmetless stormtrooper who eyed them suspiciously before transferring their aim back to several of the bridge crew.

"Uh. Guys?" Finn asked. "Making friends?" he added, stepping past the stormtrooper and receiving a grin that in any other circumstance would have given him serious pause. As it was, he was pretty sure it wasn't intended for him—still, he smiled nervously back and edged carefully over to Karé and Iolo, pulling Poe along with him.

“BB-8, my buddy!” Poe cried, dropping to a knee beside his friend and startling everyone as pilot and astromech had a touching reunion.

[Friend-Poe, are you all right? Did Enemy-Ren hurt you? Your vitals are sub-optimal.]

“What? Buddy, no. No way. Rey and Finn kept me safe.”

Iolo turned around, smiled, and then looked back at his controls, before turning around again to look at Poe a second time:

"Poe, can't you wait until the mission's over before you start gettin' kinky?"

"That's his way of saying we're glad to see you alive," Karé said, not looking up.

"I hate you so much, Arana," Poe said, blushing bright red as Karé waved him into her seat and moved to another pilot's chair.

"That's his way of saying he missed us," Karé continued, sounding distracted and annoyed as she got the other piloting station online. BB-8 was getting the plans, but they still wouldn't be able to do much without a fourth pilot, so either Rey or Skywalker needed to get here or Finn was going to get a crash course...

Poe looked to the helmetless stormtrooper like they were his only hope, and shoved the binders in their direction. "Can you get these off? Any of you?"

"Oh, no. Only Captain Phasma and Kylo Ren have the code," Punch said, but they weren't looking at Poe. They were looking at Finn. "You're Eight-Seven. Finn. You're Finn."

Poe grinned in spite of himself: the stormtrooper looked like they were meeting a celebrity.

…

It was a good thing Rey and Luke weren’t going easy on Ren, because when the gunship lurched, a TIE skidded across the hangar to separate Kylo Ren from Rey and Luke, and Rey was reminded of the earth breaking apart to keep her from coup-de-grasing the injured Kylo Ren on Starkiller. Was the Force trying to tell her _not_ to kill him?

If so, the Force was an idiot.

“Master—he’s getting—” Rey cried, clambering up and over the TIE, but, “away,” she said. Kylo Ren had disappeared, and she could spy at least three possible exits. “Damn!” Rey sat heavily.

But Luke tapped her shoulder, nodding to the corridor he had sent Finn down. “He went this way,” he said, and spoke into his com. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve lost sight of Ren, so be on your guards. We’re coming to the bridge in case he’s headed there.”

…

"Yes? Yeah...they used to call me Eight-Seven. Um. Are you...?" Finn asked, not really sure how to respond to being recognized. "I mean, of course you're helping us, obviously, but—"

"I'm coming with you," the stormtrooper answered. "Also, duck." They turned their weapon from the bridge crew and fired over Finn's shoulder at more attacking stormtroopers. "There will be more where they came from. We should close the blast door," they commented, looking at Finn as if he were the one supposed to be giving orders.

[Don’t do that!] BB-8 screeched, wheeling around. [Friend-Rey and Friend-Master-Skywalker are inbound. And Enemy-Ren is loose.]

Poe glanced down at his droid and then up at Finn, gut clenching and eyes flashing.

Finn set his jaw and nodded, turning back to his Stormtrooper companion. "We can't shut the blast doors until Rey and Luke get here—you and I can hold them off," he told them, and their eyes went wide.

“We?” they asked. “Even if Lord Ren…”

Finn nodded. He wasn't giving Kylo Ren another chance to hurt anyone he cared about.

"Okay, okay. Wait—Luke _Skywalker_?" they said, struggling to process this.

Finn nodded again.

The stormtrooper shook their head, then sobered and nodded to the doorway. "Thank you," they added softly, after they'd stood guard for perhaps five minutes. "For—"

"Okay, hate to break up the party but we've got more company!" Poe cried suddenly from the primary pilot’s chair. "Finn, buddy, I need you to be my copilot til Rey gets here!"

"I failed that practical, Poe!" Finn yelped as the ship rocked unevenly, but made to move into the seat anyway.

“I could help, sir,” Punch offered, and Poe didn’t say anything so Finn motioned for them to take the seat.

"Okay, I can’t see anything from this chair. What've we got, Poe?" Iolo asked, relieved from attempting to pilot two seats with his admittedly freakishly long arms.

"I’ve got multiple bogeys—shit, it's the kriffing _Finalizer_ , and more TIEs than we need to be dealing with right now. We need to go dark,” Poe said, trying to get their shields up. “Who knows how to work this cloaking tech?"

"Working on it!" Karé cried. “BB-8, a little help?”

[Working on it! I am trying to keep Friend-Captain-Arana from crashing us!]

"Whoops, wrong way," Iolo said as he righted them. “Y'alright there, Punch?”

Punch was...not exactly trained for this, which they were about to voice when one of the hostage bridge crew cleared her throat pointedly.

"I can help with that," she said, with the briefest glance between Finn and Poe. "Permission to join the Resistance?" she asked.

Even though things were very tense and needed to be happening quickly, Poe looked to Finn, and so did everyone else.

Finn shifted uneasily—how was he suddenly in charge of these decisions? "We'll take you with us, if you'll consent to being under guard until we know we can trust you," he said.

"Same deal I made," Punch told the crewman, but the tech nodded at the weapon Punch was still allowed to hold. " _Please_...as if Eight-Fucking-Seven—I mean, Finn—couldn't stop me if I tried anything," they scoffed.

The crewman cracked a smile. "Point taken. I will remain under guard." The ship lurched again, and Iolo cursed.

"Take over for Punch," Finn told the crewman, only too glad to not have to try not to get them all killed, or let Punch do it. She scrambled to the open seat and hit a few buttons before turning to Karé.

"Should be able to engage the cloak now," she told her.

"Got it!" Karé shouted triumphantly, and the room was filled with Poe shouting orders to coordinate their movements—he was doing it like a squadron commander and not a bridge commander, but it got the job done.

[Unsanctioned departure from—] BB-8 began, but a cry from Finn interrupted them.

"Rey!"

"It's Kylo Ren and Phasma!" Rey cried, sprinting past and leaning in to Iolo’s console. "They're getting away, you have to stop them! Use the tractor beam!"

"Belay that and sit down, Rey," Poe said. "That star destroyer is right on us. We're going to let them pick up Ren while we make the jump to light speed."

Rey glowered, but filled the fifth seat. She supposed it was more important to get out of this _alive…_

"We're takin' fire, but shields are holding."

"Oh my gods, why can't we shake them?!"

"Every time they hit us they get a better idea where we are."

"Well, they can track us, of course," the defecting bridge officer said. "Through the nav computers. They are...all linked up?" She said this like it was common knowledge, but Poe felt suddenly faint, like he had been offered a million credits in the middle of a dogfight. This was new—and potentially huge—intel. If true, they had made a bigger capture than they first thought. They just needed to get out of here alive.

"What's your name?" he asked the bridge tech.

"Timons, sir."

 _Oh, so she got a name, but Finn didn't_? Poe didn't say, but thought, viciously. "Timons. Good. Thank you. You? Trooper?"

"Punch, sir."

"Punch." Not really a name, but Finn had told him how most stormtroopers often got nicknames. "Good to meet you, Punch. Do you know where the navigation computer is on this ship?"

Punch nodded.

"I want you to take Rey and Finn to it so Rey can power it down. Disable it if you have to but for the love of the Force do not destroy it. And while you're at it, drop these two in the brig for us.”

Punch, Finn, and Rey nodded and were up and away, guiding the two officers ahead of them.

“Skywalker, I want you on the com, take Rey’s seat." The trio nodded and disappeared, and Poe turned and gave Luke a smirk: “Unless _you_ want to start giving orders, General," he offered, belatedly.

"I think you're doing just fine." Luke sounded bemused, but Poe didn't have time for his sass.

"Okay, then I need you to get a coded message to Chewie, fast. Tell him we need nav coordinates for a jump. Put us in Hutt space for now." Sometimes, Poe thought he would like being a bridge captain on a larger ship like this, because it was kind of fun. He would come to his senses the next time he sat in _Black One_ , though.

…

After dropping the bridge officers off in the brig without mishap (Phasma had indeed escaped, her cell door slashed open by a lightsaber), Finn, blaster drawn but held by his side, followed behind Rey as Punch led them at a jog to the nav computer.

He could make only basic sense of the components once they found the computer matrix, but Rey and Punch set to without much in the way of talking, so he guarded their backs.

There was a loud crack behind him and Rey yelped and crashed into him. He whirled, concerned she might be injured.

"Should have warned you," Punch said, and Rey blinked at them. But the machinery started humming again, so, without breaking Rey's gaze, the trooper reached out and gave a console a solid thunk with their fist.

It whirred to a stop.

"That should do it," Rey commented dryly, and the trooper grinned.

Rey grinned back.

Finn decided they were never, ever allowed to work together unless sabotage was needed. They'd have this ship taken apart at its bolts faster than he could warn Poe that they were bored, if they weren't careful.

"Time to move," he said, and herded them away from the disabled equipment.

…

On the bridge, Finn's voice crackled in through BB-8’s comlink, startling them all, as focused as they were on piloting in sync—and keeping at least half an eye on their backs. "BB-8, tell Poe we've disabled the nav computer and hostiles are in the brig."

Poe whooped. "Okay, do we have coordinates from Chewie?"

"Received," Luke said.

"And entered," added Iolo.

A shot ricocheted off their shields, hard. 

"I think it's safe to say they've got Ren onboard and are opening fire." 

"More TIEs on the way!" 

This couldn't just be a simple jump to lightspeed, could it?

"Okay, let's try to outjump them. Kun, Arana, BB-8, we're gonna do a Wotan Weave. Skywalker and Timons, punch it on my mark!"

[Are you kriffing kidding me?!]

“What?!”

"In this thing? Poe, are you insane?!"

"What part of ‘Wotan Weave’ and ‘punch it’ wasn't clear?" Poe repeated, and as they reversed forward thrusters and killed the aft ones, BB-8 helping to coax the gunship into corkscrewing in the middle of space to achieve an even sideways slip with their narrowest side(s) facing the star destroyer.

It also meant they jumped into hyperspace at an angle and with plenty of awkward momentum.

"This is gonna _hurt_ when we get outta hyperspace," Iolo moaned, but there was nothing they could do about it now.

"We'll be ready for it," Poe said, and stood up. "BB-8, start running sims for how we right ourselves depending on the angle we drop out in.”

[Already on it. We’ve exploded in my first six simulations.]

“Ooookay, I want better odds than that, Bee. Let’s see to any repairs, make sure we are functioning when we drop out of hyperspace, except, I guess, for the nav computer. Karé and Iolo, take care of that. I'll watch the bridge." Poe looked down at his hands. "Master Luke, any chance _you_ can get these off me?"

Luke frowned at the cuffs, waving his hand over them a few times.

"An ingenious design. It's almost like they expected a Force user to attempt to rescue you," he said wryly.

Poe rolled his eyes. "Well, look, I need them off if we're going to come out of hyperspace in one piece."

The bridge officer coughed. "I might be able to help with that, too."

…

Finn, Rey, and Punch headed back toward the bridge the long way, because, as Punch put it, there were probably still some thick skulls to knock some sense into (or consciousness out of). "What's your full complement?" Finn asked, to get an idea of how many they might be still need to watch out for.

"Forty, but we were traveling with a skeleton crew, so I think we left with twenty-two. We know five are either dead or defected, plus those four outside the bridge door," they said.

"Great. So that leaves...eleven."

"That’s not even a challenge," Rey laughed, and Finn frowned deeply at her.

They accounted for six more, deposited them in the brig when they were uninterested in defecting, and then met Karé and Iolo, who were just putting a panel back on the wall after boosting the shields. "Who's on the bridge?" Finn asked, mildly alarmed, but Karé patted him on the shoulder reassuringly.

"Luke is with them, don't worry."

"Duck."

They all looked at Punch.

Punch raised their gun.

Iolo made a noise he'd later deny resembled a startled screech of terror, sure that the stormtrooper was betraying them.

Punch fired.

"Holy hells!" Iolo bellowed as a body hit the floor behind him where only Punch had been watching.

"You're welcome," they said smugly, and Rey nearly choked on her own spit, she was trying so hard not to laugh. “Four more unaccounted for.”

 _Children_ , Finn thought. _I work with children._


	6. Chapter 6

Poe let Timons approach him only because Luke was there with his lightsaber in hand. BB-8 looked ready to pull away from their dataport and charge, shocker-first, but Poe waved them off.

"Um, so we'll need a kind of insulation," she said, "because when I try to get it off..."

"Just do it," Poe growled. "We don't have a lot of time."

"Well this," she said, holding up a small device, "will cycle through codes until it guesses the right one.”

[I can do _that_!] BB-8 chirped shrilly, not trusting this First Order organic one bit, though they were startled when she turned to face them, apparently fluent in Binary:

“Yeah, but I don’t think you’ll want to do this to your Master. Every wrong answer will deliver another shock, and I'm not sure it won't kill him before it will release him."

"It won't _what_?!" came a shriek from the doorway, and Rey barreled in, standing between Poe and the officer.

Poe turned, flushing with embarrassment. Of all the scenarios he could imagine being manhandled by Rey while wearing handcuffs, this was not among the ideal ones. It was just humiliating. "You got any better suggestions?" he demanded.

"Just leave ‘em on, Poe, they look good on you," Karé teased.

“Great, I guess _you_ want to be in the primary pilot’s seat when we come out of a Wotan Weave at .75 past light speed?”

No one had an answer to that. Not even the Jedi pilots wanted to try that one.

Rey already had her knife out, and for a horrible moment Poe thought she was going to stab Timons with it, or try to cut his hand off or something, but instead she used its wicked curve to stab into the floor, pulling up a strip of rubber flooring. "Here," she said, tenderly tucking the rubber in between his wrists on the binders, and Poe used her closeness to steal a kiss.

Which…was a mistake. They still had a mission to complete and he couldn't do it when all he could think about was kissing Rey again.

"Turn it on," he told Timons, but the first code still jolted him, making him curse.

"Turn it off!" Finn demanded, rushing forward, but Poe shook his head.

"It's fine, let me just—need somewhere quiet to...go..." _Suffer in peace? Scream into the void? Not let my men see me like this? Go jerk off in private?_

(Gods, he was sick, but, dampened by the rubber, the shock was _just_ on this side of painful and he had to bite the inside of his mouth or Karé and Iolo would never let him hear the end of it.)

"There's a briefing room just here, sir," Timons offered, opening a door.

"I'm coming with you," Rey said firmly.

"I am, too," Finn said, and nodded to Luke to take the bridge. He followed Rey and Poe into the office, with BB-8 rolling behind.

“No, BB-8, we need you out here doing your job,” Karé called, beckoning the droid back to their dataport, knowing they weren’t going to like seeing this—and at a nod from Poe, BB-8 followed Karé with a sad hoot.

Timons indicated some buttons on the device.

"This starts and stops it," she said, and then gave the three of them a quizzical look before leaving and closing the door behind her. Finn turned to Poe. He started to ask a question, but Rey beat him to it.

"You feel funny. What's wrong?" she asked.

"Sorry," Poe said, grinding his teeth as it jolted him again. ( _Just don't_ moan _, for the love of the Force_ , he told himself.) "I just need—will you kiss me? To take my mind off it," he said, though that wasn't entirely true.

Finn didn't need to be asked twice, and neither did Rey. She nuzzled his neck and kissed along his jaw until she came to his chin, then stood a little taller to reach his mouth. Finn, standing behind him, kissed his neck, matching the timing of his kisses to the shocks from the cuffs in hopes that that would better distract Poe.

 _Fuck_ , Poe thought. This was bad. He had it bad.

"Oh, Finn, oh Rey," Poe moaned, pupils blown black as he called on the highest powers he knew. "We almost died like twelve times and I don't know if we'll explode when we drop out of lightspeed, please fuck me," he begged before he knew what he was begging, fingers fisting in whoever's clothes he could reach. He was a completely different person from the man he was less than five minutes ago, giving orders to a Jedi Master and piloting a warship with his hands literally tied, like a kriffing badass. 

This perplexed Finn, and he pulled back to double check that Poe was okay. "Seriously?" he asked, as amused as he was confused.

"Yeah he's not kidding. I'm not even trying and I can tell he's not kidding," Rey provided helpfully.

"Uh. Okay, okay, but you can't be loud... Rey, you want to kiss him quiet for me?" Finn asked with a crooked grin as he brushed his hands softly down Poe's sides and rested them for a moment on his hips.

Poe shivered and nodded, and when Rey eased him back onto a table and moved his hands up over his head, probably just to get the metal out of the way, it was entirely over.

"Please, gods, please, I—I need you," he rasped, kissing and clinging, fumbling with their clothes and his. He was so glad he was in civilian clothes instead of a flight suit, though it was obvious that his pants were tented. This was not appropriate. They were still on a mission, on an enemy vessel, but Poe's only consolation (with the last shred of coherence he had left) was that at this point he would be _so much worse_ if he couldn't take care of this. "Finn, Rey, please, I love you, love you _so_ much," he whispered, hoping, praying that the door was locked.

"It's okay, shhh, we have you," Finn said, and Rey moved just far enough out of the way that she could still kiss Poe without being a hindrance to Finn. For a moment, she leaned into Finn's space and kissed him, too, and while Rey kissed him, Finn got Poe's pants nudged down far enough to stroke his cock just once to gauge his reaction.

Poe whimpered softly, letting them arrange him how they wanted, and he gasped as Finn got his pants down and stroked him, but even he couldn't tell if that noise was any different from the one he made when the binders got another wrong code and zapped him. "Oh gods, Finn, yes, please don't stop. _Rey_ ," he keened, because now she had her hand in his hair and her kisses were fierce as a lightsaber duel.

Finn would have liked to take it slow, but time was not on their side. He pressed kisses to Poe's chest and stroked him more earnestly, twisting his hand in that way that usually made Poe turn to jelly. "Love you. Love you so much. We're okay, we'll be okay, I love you two," he said softly.

"Love you love you love you," Poe whispered, when his mouth wasn't otherwise occupied with Rey's, or Finn's, and once the smoke cleared he was immediately aware how was lucky he was of two things: one, he didn't last long at all, and came like a fountain over Finn's fingers within minutes, and two, the binders clicked open at the same time as he climaxed.

Definitely no correlation.

"Fuck, fuck, _kriff_ ," he said, trying to lurch into a sitting position. "Oh my gods, I'm sorry, sorry, I don't know what came over me," he stammered. "Thank you, wow, Maker, thank you." He kissed them each and would have licked Finn's hands clean if he hadn't already produced a handkerchief to clean himself.

The change in Poe was so sudden, Rey had to laugh. "Poe, what are you apologizing for?" she said, and ran a hand through his hair to calm him because he was still panting and his pupils weren't even normal yet. She took his hands and inspected his wrists. "They don't look so bad. We should have Dr. Kalonia look at you, though, to be sure the shocks didn't do anything to, like, your heart or something."

"Don't you think if my heart was going to give out it would have done it when I was being electrocuted while having sex?" Poe replied, grinning wryly as he fastened his pants.

"Okay, and _you_ can be the one to tell her that," Rey retorted.

"…That's not funny."

"It's a little funny," Rey giggled, kissing him.

"Alright, let's just...Poe, your hair..." Finn said fondly, and ran his fingers through it until it lay somewhat flat and in the right direction. Rey's hair was wild, a little, but she quickly took it out of its buns and put it back up and it looked like it always did. "Everyone set to rights?" Finn asked with a soft smile for each of them. He loved them so much it made his heart feel like it might burst, sometimes, and even though he tried to ignore it, it was a little thrilling to have just done _that_ on a First Order warship. "We have a ship to bring home."

"Yeah. _Yeah_ ," Poe said, looking up from where he was doing up his belt again, and he seemed to Rey and Finn like twice the hotshot pilot he was before they'd gone into this room alone together, and if that difference seemed a little odd, they'd ask that question when they didn't desperately need a hotshot pilot.

Deliberately avoiding looking at the binders, Poe swept Rey and Finn into his arms and kissed them. "Thank you," he whispered, tenderly, privately, and pressed all three of their foreheads together. "When I said we might die dropping out of lightspeed, I promise I was just flirting." He winked and was bounding out the door and onto the bridge. "All right, gang, we've got a prize to bring home to mother and she don't want it if it's not in one piece."

[We've got three hours in hyperspace] BB-8 informed him cheerfully, glad to see him back.

"Oh. Still?"

Three hours to ignore the pointed looks Karé and Iolo were giving him, then.

"Sounds boring," Rey said. "There any food on this ship?" she asked Punch.

“No, the First Order is battery-powered,” Punch replied, and Rey laughed, liking their sarcasm.

"Come on, you’ve got to have something. We could find it." Rey turned to Luke, who sighed a long, fond sigh for his trouble-making apprentice.

"Don't break anything...?" he told her.

Poe grinned, spinning in his chair, feeling light and bright. "Okay, but be back well before that," Poe said, "because I'll need time to eat, too." He winked. "Punch, make sure she doesn’t get lost. Finn, you staying or going?"

Punch peered at her blaster, checking its power cell. "We shouldn't run into trouble. We've accounted for a dozen of us, and the others might have made it out with Phasma and Ren. Finn, if you come with us, I can show you where the gunner positions are, in case the _Finalizer_ managed to follow us."

"Good idea," Finn said. He double-checked his own blaster, kissed Poe, and joined Punch and Rey by the door (though then Rey had to run back and kiss Poe’s cheek before she left, too). "Lead on," he told the stormtrooper, and they set off.

"There's gunner turrets that way," Punch said at the first intersection they came to. "And the other way too. Everything is symmetrical."

Finn looked down either hall.

"Can we go see one of them, then?" he asked, and Punch nodded.

The gunner positions were pretty much what Finn had expected (now that he had passed all the officer exams and the only parts of the starship exam he had done well on was weapons), so it didn't take long to assess what they would need to man one or two.

"Food now?" Rey asked, and Finn threw his arm over her shoulder so he could pull her close and give her a kiss, grinning at her single-minded focus.

"Food now." He grinned at Punch as the stormtrooper gave them a considering look.

"Well, I have a vague idea where they keep the rations, but it'll be locked, and I sure don't have the codes to get in..." they said.

Rey held up the device which they had used to crack Poe's cuffs, and Finn was surprised she had grabbed it. "We can use this. I didn’t know BB-8 had one of these, too! That could be useful to remember."

Punch shrugged. "All this for protein rations?" They wondered, but led them to supply. "I think this is where we rations are kept."

Without further ado, Rey hooked the code-breaker to the lock on the door and turned it on. It took about a minute, but eventually it made a pleasant little waterfall of beeps and the door's lock clicked open.

Rey yanked it open, but frowned, because she hadn't been considering that there would _only_ be protein rations.

Neither Finn nor Punch seemed surprised, though.

"Eat up," Finn laughed, like he'd known the whole time this was going to happen. Rey wheeled and pointed a finger at him, wordless. The meaning was clear— 'One more word and I will fight you.’ He grinned and chuckled again, until she threw a protein ration right at his head. "Hey! Cheating! I wasn't watching!" he yelped after he'd ducked.

"It's an ambush, of course you weren't!" Rey laughed, and threw another. "Hey Punch!" she said, and the stormtrooper, who had been watching their backs, turned just in time to get a protein ration to the face.

Punch frowned darkly, and Rey stepped back into the ration closet. "Sorry, um, sorry! I thought you'd catch it!" she babbled, and Finn put a hand out as if to stop Punch from punching Rey. But Punch only glanced over at him without moving their head and quirked a small grin before darting a hand out and grabbing a protein ration, which they flicked at Rey.

After the food fight, Rey had to actually open one, because stressful situations (and, sometimes, sex, if their tryst in the briefing room counted) made her hungry.

"Eww, this is disgusting," Rey said, as she ate the whole thing quickly to avoid not-tasting it.

Finn and Punch laughed. "You can't have a whole one at one meal!" Punch laughed. "Our caloric intake is well controlled. I only ever got a full bar if I was doing extra duties or extra PT!"

Rey scrunched up her nose. It sounded a lot like Unkar Plutt controlling how much his workers ate. "That's awful. Here, have as much as you want, but there's much better food in the Resistance, you'll see. We'll have Poe make some empanadas for you—or anything, really. Poe is a good cook."

Punch blinked. "Your _commander_ cooks for you?" they gasped.

"Well, he's not my commander,” Rey explained, barely refraining from adding _I’m his commander_. “He's my fiancé. Our fiancé. But he does also cook for his squadron on special occasions, yes."

The ex-stormtrooper looked amazed.

"His flan isn't bad either," Finn commented from where he was sitting a few feet away and seeing how high he could stack a pyramid of rations before they'd fall over. Punch reached over and very carefully removed one from the very bottom corner, sending the most recent stack tumbling. He looked at them and they cleared their throat uneasily.

"You are...also his fiancé?" they asked, and Finn smiled softly.

"Yeah. You can love—and be with—whoever you want, now, you know, as long as the other person is okay with it. It's different. It takes getting used to, but you will get used to it, I promise," he told them. They still looked uncertain, but they shrugged and handed back the ration they'd pulled from the pyramid.

Now Rey was tearing off the wrappers and discovering that the bars, because they had a kind of pasty consistency, actually made for an excellent clay. "I'm going to guess you weren't allowed to do this with your food," Rey said, as she shaped it into a rudimentary quadruped, probably a horse.

Punch surprised them both by laughing. "Looks more fun than eating it," they said, and began flattening out pieces to form flower petals. "Not that we ever had food lying around that we didn’t eat, but even the bugs wouldn't go for it."

"Yeah, but there's coffee and doughnuts in the break room," Finn told them with a small smile, and although Rey knit her brow ( _Stormtroopers were allowed a break room but had to eat this?!_ ), Punch laughed.

"Yeah. Never found the break room, though," they said, smiling down at their almost-complete flower as they opened another bar.

"Should we go look for it?" Rey asked, now building a tree with ration bar, and beginning to fold the wrappers into intricate shapes.

"No, it's—it’s a joke, Rey. There's no break room," Finn said. Apparently there were a lot of stormtrooper jokes Finn had forgotten about.

"But it's hilarious to imply there is one,” Punch added.

Rey looked between Finn and Punch, thoughtful, and then shook her head.

"Okay but would Kylo Ren have been eating this garbage? He’s too much of a stuck-up prick to eat this. Let's go find _his_ break room!" Rey said, surging to her feet so quickly that she toppled over her horse and sent protein rations scattering across the floor.

"Oh that's an idea!" Punch agreed, jumping up as well. They didn't seem to be much older than Finn, and were relishing the opportunity to be a child for the first time. And stealing food from Kylo Ren would feel _good_. "I know the officers quarters are this way," Punch said, leading them deeper into the bowels of the ship, until finally they gazed down a hallway no stormtrooper was allowed down.

"Uh, it's here," Punch said, hesitating. Even Finn looked nervous about the hall.

It felt the same as all the others to Rey, though, and she wondered if this was ingrained, somehow.

"R-reconditioning is down here, too," Punch said.

Finn found that he couldn't force himself to take another step down the hall, at least for a moment. He stood stock still as Punch told them what lay down that hall. He'd never been here before, logic told him (he'd gotten out before he was sent here), but he could feel a thin thread of panic anyway. Then Rey touched his hand and he shook his head, clearing it. When he turned to look at her, she was concerned. "I'm okay. Just...ghosts, I guess," and she stood on her toes to better wrap her arms around his shoulders and hug him tight.

"So. How badly do we want Kylo Ren's secret stash?" she asked.

Punch eyed Finn warily. "I don't need to push my luck," they offered, but Rey looked determined.

"Do we think someone will be down here?" Rey wondered. "I mean, no one's here to Recondition anybody, so nothing to worry about, right?" She squeezed Finn's hand and offered a hand to Punch, who took it unsteadily. _Why did they even have Reconditioning on a warship?_ Rey wondered.

"No, of course there's no one here," Punch said, recovering some of their courage (though they didn't drop Rey's hand). Finn glanced over at them, noting the slightly wild look in their eyes.

"It _would_ be a good ‘fuck you’ to Kylo Ren and the First Order..." Finn ventured, which made Punch grin. They dropped Rey's hand and prowled down the hall, followed by Finn and Rey.

"Here," they said, standing in front of a door that was distinguishable from the others only in being a darker shade—a matte black door in a hall of shiny black. The First Order had an aesthetic and they stuck with it. 

This time Rey drew her lightsaber, having absolutely no compunction about destroying this door, and thrust her lightsaber through the locking mechanism with a cry. The door slid open freely.

And then she almost had to laugh.

Inside everything was black and red and luxurious, like he had all the credits in the world to spend on making himself look and feel Evil with a capital E. There were pictures—actual _framed pictures_ —old propaganda, mostly—of Darth Vader on every wall.

"The leader of the First Order, ladies and gentlemen," Punch managed with a nervous laugh, and then they had to sit down.

Finn ran his hand over old lightsaber scores on the walls and furniture where Ren had clearly thrown his tantrums.

But Rey, unsentimental, or else too disgusted, was already rummaging for food.

"He's…really not stable," Finn said as he joined Punch sitting on the floor.

"Really?" they asked dryly.

Finn chuckled.

"So've you found any good food yet?" Punch asked Rey.

"Not stable is right, but he's got proper rations at least," Rey said, unearthing snacks from a cupboard. It was strange to think of Kylo Ren eating _candy_ , but Rey tossed a pack to Punch. "These are sweet and sour, you'll like them," she said. "And these rations aren't bad cold," she added, opening up the fried duck one. "This is Poe's favorite."

Punch was prepared for new flavor frontiers, but candy was still overwhelming. "My gods," they gasped, spitting it out at first because it was too intense.

"Okay?" Finn asked Punch when they spit out the candy.

"It's—what _is_ this?" they asked, and nibbled at another piece. "It's not _bad_. Just... weird."

"Right? You get used to that, too. It's a lot," Finn said. It was beginning to occur to him that maybe not all stormtroopers were like him, or like Deeks, who was, after all, young, and adapted quickly. For a split second, Punch looked unsure, like they hadn't expected much difference. Then they shrugged one shoulder, grinned, and tossed a candy in the air to catch in their mouth.

"That's what I'm here for," they said, and took a few more candies before tossing them over to Finn.

"He doesn't have any chocolate," Rey said, like nothing could confirm his evilness more, and she joined them with several of the cold meal rations. Finn held out the candy in offering and she took some. "Okay—this is spicy, so maybe be a little careful with it, but the rest shouldn't be too exciting," she said to Punch, indicating a sort of cold chicken salad.

Punch was glad to try each new thing, the second try always tasting better than the first. "What else have I been missing out on?" they grumbled, once they settled in with buttery crackers, the flavor that appealed most to their palate.

"Chocolate," Rey said, absolutely seriously. "And rain. Sleeping in. Feeling safe." She smiled. "You know, things you never get used to."

Punch was about to answer when they froze and turned to Finn, signaling 'Someone's outside' with their hands.

Finn stopped what he was doing and silently rose to his feet, giving Punch a signal that he'd cover her. Not understanding the signals but getting the gist, Rey unholstered her lightsaber and came to stand next to him. Punch stepped closer to the doorway and waited for the steps to come closer, but they stopped.

 _Who talks first_? Finn thought to Rey.

She looked over and rolled her eyes fondly at the inside joke.

To their surprise, Punch spoke first. "Nothing to see here," they said, though they held their weapon up.

A pause, then, "It's KT-9000. Punch, is that you? What are you doing in here?"

"Klif?" Punch ducked out of the room, weapon lowered and candy clutched in their gloved hand. They spoke quietly while Rey and Finn looked at each other.

"I'm here with some Resistance fighters," Punch was explaining. "Eight-Seven is here, and the pilot who helped him escape."

Feeling like that was their cue, Rey slipped out of the room, to find four surprised (they even seemed almost frightened) stormtroopers raising weapons at her until Finn came up behind her.

"And the Jedi who wounded Lord Ren," Punch supplied.

"We also have names," Rey said. "I'm Rey, this is Finn. We're, ah, here to rescue you?"

"Have you seen any other stormtroopers that we need to worry about?" Finn asked, and the other stormtrooper, the one called Klif, shook his head. "Good. Keep your blasters until we reach the bridge, but remove your helmets," Finn told them. On second thought, he added, "Punch, could you lead us back? Rey and I will cover our backs." It wasn't that he didn't trust them, but there was such a thing as too much trust. And the stormtroopers seemed approving, nodding to him once they'd removed their helmets, and following Punch without a word of argument.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kylo Ren's bedroom of course inspired by the Lego TFA game: 


	7. Chapter 7

 On the bridge, Poe's stomach dropped and his chest tightened suddenly in something like fear for no apparently reason. He wasn't prone to anxiety attacks, so he commed Rey and Finn, since sometimes they could sense each other's emotions, and maybe they were in trouble. "Finn? Rey? Everything all right?" he asked, and after a moment, Rey's voice crackled through.

"Poe? We're fine down here. We...ran into some new friends. You all right?"

"Yeah," he said, taking a deep breath. Maybe he was just being paranoid. "Yeah. Can you come back to the bridge?"

"Of course. You should see Kylo's quarters, Poe, you would laugh."

Poe did laugh, but bitterly. "Ha. Gross. I’m not eating anything from his quarters. Hurry back."

"Okay," Rey said, and signaled to the group. "On the bridge, you'll have to relinquish your weapons for a time. If you don't want to, you can go to the brig with some of your officers. But I promise you'll be treated well if you come with us. I mean, we won't hurt you, either way, of course."

The stormtroopers glanced at Punch, and Finn, but Klif nodded. "Finn's a legend. We trust him, and anyone else he trusts."

When they reached the bridge, Finn and Rey took the troopers' blasters and put them to the side, out of reach and under Luke's watchful eye. Then Finn went to Poe, resting a hand on his shoulder and giving him a quick kiss by way of hello. "Everything okay?" he asked softly as Rey joined them and raised her eyebrows in concern. She put a hand out to touch Poe's wrist and reassure them both.

Poe turned his palm up in Rey's grasp and reached for Finn with his free hand. "Everything is great. Just got a weird vibe and was worried about you two." He leaned forward to glance at the stormtroopers and waved. "If you got a fanclub going, Finno, I get to be president. I'm pretty sure I founded the thing."

"They want to come with us, Poe," Rey said. 

"Fantastic. They need a pilot?" He grinned.

"They need a pilot," Finn agreed.

"Well, awesome, because we have—" Poe was about to answer, but stopped, getting that awful feeling again. “Um, hang on.”

The entire warship lurched, and an BB-8 screamed an alarm. Poe flung his arms out to steady Rey and Finn.

"Everyone hang onto something!" Luke cried as "Pilots to your stations!" Poe screamed, and just as Rey flung herself into her pilot seat, the ship shuddered out of hyperspace, careening aft over fore like an entirely unsafe version of spin-the-bottle, and no amount of gravity control could keep anything that wasn't strapped down from pitching all over the bridge.

Finn was immediately thrown to the ground as the ship lurched and flipped. He ducked his head and curled into as much of a ball as he could, given that he was being hurled against walls and chairs just like everyone else. Luke was shouting but had managed to stay where he was, albeit on the floor.

"Finn!" Poe shouted as everyone was tossed around the cabin. Rey barely got into her seat before momentum pitched her forward, and she was clinging to her console, unable to do anything. Iolo was bucked from his seat.

"Skywalker! Break hard port!" Poe cried, grinding the reverse thrusters. "Kun, get our ass up!"

The ship was screaming at him, and he was pretty confident they put some cracks in the hull, but Poe rode out the rough jerks, timing it until he could hit the forward thrusters and right them.

At some point, Finn wedged himself against a chair and found it was Rey's—she reached briefly over and touched his hair to reassure herself that he was no longer bouncing around the bridge. The other stormtroopers had found similar spots around the room, or had at least found hand-holds to keep themselves in one place. Finn didn’t think any of them looked seriously injured, but they probably wouldn't have shown it anyway if they had been.

The bridge breathed a sigh of relief as they evened out. "There, you see? No problem."

"You're certifiable, Dameron," Iolo said, clambering back into his seat.

"Everyone okay?" Poe asked, and the Resistance reported no injuries greater than bruises.

"Punch?" Finn asked, and heard the stormtrooper taking stock of their friends.

"All present and functional," they answered.

Finn sighed deeply. "Anything broken?" he asked.

"Nothing important," came the short reply, and that finally prompted Finn to stand and go to them.

"It's nothing serious," Punch told him, so defensive that Finn took a step back.

"Punch. No one is going to get taken away. If someone is hurt, we'll fix it in medical once we land, but we have medicine here for pain," he told them, worried now.

Punch glared at him a bit longer for good measure and then stepped to the side.

"Ah. Maybe stay there and we'll bring the medicine to you, huh?" he asked a trooper, not much older than Deeks, whose leg was obviously broken. The young woman nodded silently, gritting her teeth, and Finn took Punch to find the med kit stowed away in a cabinet under one of the computers. Once they had settled the injured stormtrooper, Finn joined Rey and Poe. "Minor injuries—a broken leg, but not compound or anything. Punch is taking care of it," he told them.

"Okay, see, that’s what’s wrong with you stormtroopers: you think a broken leg is a _minor_ injury," Poe breathed, pulling Finn into a hug in between maneuvers.

"Don't worry, kid, your medical bills will come out of Dameron's paycheck," Iolo chirped.

"Hey, we _survived_! Kind of miraculously, I might add!" Poe protested, but he grinned. "Okay, anyone who needs medical attention, for moon's sakes, get your ass strapped to a chair. This one don't stop til the end of the line. Rey, sweetheart, I'm sorry but I need you to un-break the nav computer or we're not going anywhere—"

"Poe," Luke said, and smiled. "I don't think we need the navigation computer."

"What? Of course we do! I mean I know it's a risk, but we came out early, Chewie doesn't know where we are, the FO could pick up on us any—" Poe trailed off. Luke was giving him a knowing look. Poe glowered. "If you say ‘use the Force,’ Skywalker, I swear—"

"I was going to say ‘turn on the viewscreen.’"

Poe sighed. He turned on the viewscreen.

And at that minute sensors came to life after having the hell shaken out of them, and Karé laughed and Iolo whooped.

"No. No, no that's impossible. We can't—we weren't even _near_ —" But Poe was laughing.

" _Finn_ is that what I think it is?" Rey cried shrilly, standing up. "Poe, is that Takodana?!"

"Where Maz...?" Finn started, but Rey, guiding them in by memory to where Han had landed them, swung them around and Poe guided them all through landing procedures.

A small figure was waiting for them.

Maz only moved after forcing them to hover for a moment, and Finn burst out laughing. "Of course," he said, and only the need to look after the troopers kept him from going to the ramp to greet the eccentric woman immediately.

Poe was still laughing as they landed—which they couldn't do inconspicuously, but there was nothing for it. "Oh man, I haven't been here in years! I mean actually landed. You guys met Maz, right? Isn't she a pistol?" Poe chuckled to himself, and then turned to the stormtroopers, grabbing Finn’s and Rey's hands to keep them from disembarking before he was done here.

"I, ah—so I want you all to know you have a choice, here,” Poe said, turning to the gathering of First Order defectees. “If you want to leave the First Order, you can, and you don't have to come with us—though Force knows we need you. I just want you to know that you have a choice. As long as you don't squeal on us, and we don't end up fighting you again, you always have a choice." He nodded at Finn.

"If you stay with us, we'll take you to our base and once the General has cleared you, we'll take stock of your training and you can have some time to figure out what suits you," Finn told them. "We'll be figuring it out as we go along, so I don't promise it will be smooth sailing. And it will be easier for some of you than others to adjust, but there's help for that too." He was pretty sure somewhere Dr. Kalonia just felt the uneasy chill of dread of someone promising her help to patients easily as recalcitrant and pigheaded as Poe, and was probably going to murder him quietly and make it look accidental. "That's uh...basically it," he finished, and looked over at Poe.

Poe looked the troopers over. "She needs medical attention, she can get it on the planet. No one goes near the brig unless you want to be in it. If you want to stick with us, be back on board at 0800 tomorrow. My people, we need someone on board at all times, please. Any volunteers?"

Karé sighed. "We volunteer if you guys take the night shift."

Luke raised a hand. "I'll stay. The whole time.”

Poe shrugged. He could certainly handle himself. “You sure you _want_ to?”

"I’m…attempting to avoid Maz." He grinned.

"You know that never works forever, Master Skywalker," Poe said.

[I will stay, too!] BB-8 said, and Poe dropped to a knee.

“You sure, bud? There’s probably some cool droids you can talk to here. Maybe GA-97 will be there!”

BB-8 shook their dome and clucked a negative at him. [ _The Vapor_ is frightened and I am attempting to console her. We won’t scrap her, will we, Friend-Poe?]

“I hope not, buddy. Tell her I said she’s a beautiful bird, and I’m sorry for putting her through what I did.”

[Oh, I already apologized for you. That’s why she’s talking to me at all!]

Poe laughed and rolled his eyes, and turned to take Finn and Rey's arms as they wound through the ship to the ramp.

"Maz doesn't usually greet people at their ships like this," Poe whispered.

"I don't usually have First Order warbirds landing in my back yard, young man," she replied.

_How had she heard that?!_

Maz waited for them at the foot of the ramp, her face and mannerism more or less devoid of any obvious expression. Finn was glad to see her, but also suddenly terrified. What if she still thought he was a coward? What if he _was_ still a coward, and only she could see it?

But Rey practically bounded down the ramp, dragging them with her, and Finn had no chance to hang back. They all stood in front of her—Rey grinning, Poe not the slightest bit concerned and smiling pleasantly, and Finn trying to dissolve into the floor.

"You didn’t bring my boyfriend again, I see,” Maz said with some disdain, looking them over. “Well, people only come to see me when they need something, so I'm used to it. Poe, my boy. Come here, let me get a look at you."

Still grinning, Poe knelt in front of her so she could click her glasses on and look into his eyes. He wasn't ever sure if it was just for show, or if she liked to mess with people, or if she really saw how every person fit into the bigger picture using the Force or magic or the wisdom of a thousand years. "Talk about it tonight," she ordered him, after a moment.

Poe's grin faltered a bit. "Sure. Um. Talk about what exactly—?"

"You know what. Rey," she said, by way of dismissal of Poe, who got up and scrambled away like a man who was glad to no longer be stared at by a dragon, and Rey knelt in front of her, beaming, barely able to contain her excitement.

"Did you find Skywalker?"

"Yes, it was actually amazing, and I—"

"I want to talk to him." Rey deflated, but Maz continued: "He won't like it if I have to drag him out to talk, so you'd better tell him." Maz looked up, pushing her goggles back now and holding a hand out for Finn. Rey got up and out of the way, and ducked back into the ship.

"Finn," Maz said. "You're still here." She sounded impressed, and smiled at him kindly, almost benevolently.

"Yeah. Turns out I didn't want to run that bad," Finn said uncertainly. Maz shook her head at him and patted his hand.

"I said you _wanted_ to run, not that you _would_ ," she told him, and he blinked, which made her laugh. "Go on, join your affianced—yes, Dameron, I know that word too," she added, raising her voice enough that Poe, standing behind her and looking smug, could hear her. "He is not good at talking,” she added to Finn in a low voice. “He thinks he is, and that is worse. You must make up for it by being good at listening, I think, until he learns, and by trusting him when he does think to use his words..." Finn looked at her quizzically, but before he could say anything, Maz stepped past him to greet Luke, who had managed to make it to the top of the ramp and who Maz immediately set to scolding. Rey was running when she joined them.

"Better him than me!" she chirped.

Poe grinned at the whole scene (even if he still had no idea what she was talking about—he was excellent at talking! She must be mixing him up with Han Solo. Tons of people did that), but had to rush forward and wave stand down to a few of her bouncers and guards, who raised blasters  when stormtroopers began to emerge.

"Hey hey, easy," Poe growled. "They've surrendered, they’re with us. Kidnapped and pressed into service, and this is how we welcome them back to civilization?" He said this loudly, for the benefit of all onlookers. "Maz, a little help?" he begged as Punch hobbled down the ramp, helping the young trooper with the broken leg.

"Yes, of course." She barked orders to someone who looked like her second in command. "Make sure they have everything they need...and protection. And keep an eye on them. I'll be down to talk to them myself."

That was good. Finn doubted it would be a problem, but if anyone could tell whether any of these troopers were faking defecting or not, it was Maz.


	8. Chapter 8

“What did Maz want to talk to you about?” Rey asked Luke conversationally, as she was installing a temporary nav panel that would get them home.

Luke sighed, sounding half like an annoyed teenager whose parents were prying and half like a sad, wizened old man. Rey wasn’t sure which one he was so much of the time.

“We hadn’t talked since Ren,” he said. “And I was avoiding her.” He paused, shuffling, pulling his legs up under him even though he was sitting in a chair. “Not because of what happened, but—well, partly because of what happened—”

When Rey finally turned to look at him, she could see he had been crying, his eyes swollen and a little red-rimmed. She immediately looked away, wishing she hadn’t noticed. 

“I’m sorry,” she blurted out, and neither of them said anything for a long while. Rey went back to installing the computer. She did her best thinking when working with machines.

“When we were fighting Ren, you said he had hurt your family enough,” she blurted out. “Was that what she talked to you about?”

Luke laughed a little, and it almost sounded like it could have been a sob. “The Force _is_ strong with you,” he said, and smiled sadly. “Yeah,” he said, taking in a large breath and letting it out. “Yes. Maz wanted to know how I was doing, and I told her not well, since I essentially ran away from my problems to an ancient temple that I thought would help but didn’t.”

Rey nodded. And waited.                                                                            

“One of the casualties in Ren’s rampage was my wife,” Luke finally said. “Her name was Mara Jade. She was one of the first to fall. She suspected him, and I didn't listen—takes one to know one, I guess.”

Rey waited again. “One? One—what?”

“A Darksider.”

This was all new. Master Luke had a wife—and she used the Dark side of the Force?

"Er."

(Rey suddenly felt like she had done pretty well for herself, all things considered.)

“She had changed, obviously,” Luke said with a sad smile. “Redemption is—always possible.” Rey felt that Luke had wanted to say ‘important.'

She didn’t want to argue with that, not when she didn’t particularly want Kylo Ren to have a chance at redemption. So she let it sit, and grunted as she got the last bolt into place. “Tell me about her?”

Luke smiled and started to talk.

…

Rey spent the rest of the afternoon (it was still midday local time, though they had all been going much longer than a standard day at this point) installing the new nav computer. Poe, meanwhile, ran every bug and tracker sweep he could until the ship was clean from First Order detection. Finn helped get the troopers settled and fed in a quiet side room where they were safe from trouble.

Once the stormtroopers were settled and their injuries seen to, Finn left them with Punch and returned to the tavern, where Poe and Rey had just sat down to eat. It was weird food, just like last time, but this time Finn was in a frame of mind to actually enjoy it. Once Iolo and Karé joined them, the atmosphere became practically celebratory, and they probably were drinking too much—but they had nowhere to go until morning and Maz said everything was on the house.

Rey much preferred eating to drinking alcohol, though here there was a bubbly sweet drink like that cocktail Poe had had her try that one time, and she had one of those and felt light and warm.

Poe had a few Coruscanti martinis (so dry his mouth felt like sandpaper afterward, gods bless Maz's bartender) before dinner, but paced himself afterward. Karé and Iolo had much more—not until they were _drunk_ , but until they were...chatty.

"So, Poe, when are we going to talk about your status as Dude in Distress?" Karé teased, and Iolo guffawed.

"You know me, anything for the Resistance," Poe said into his drink.

"Nooo, nnno, no, no," Iolo, considerably drunker, said. "I mean we've known for years you look good in handcuffs. Why else did Finn here rescue him in the first place?"

Finn didn't understand what Karé and Iolo were talking about. That wasn't true; he had rescued Poe because he needed a pilot, and because Poe needed rescuing. Handcuffs had nothing to do with it. Finn looked over at Rey to see if she understood something better than he did, but she looked only marginally less confused. "Did I miss something? Am I that drunk?" Finn asked. Why did the handcuffs keep coming up? Was this an inside joke? A pilot thing?

"Please, you guys, we're not talking about that now," Poe grumbled.

Karé hit the table with her palm. "No, Poe, we're talking about this now! Maz _said_!" She wheeled around to Finn and Rey. "Okay, so Poe used to date us.”

"Oh my _gods_ , Karé!" Poe moaned, going red and unable to meet Finn or Rey's eyes.

Karé continued: “The sex was great, but it ended when the son of a bitch was promoted above us—"

"It wasn't like that,” Poe blurted out. “We...look, I was going to tell you," he told Rey and Finn, beginning to panic a little as the situation spun out of control basically instantly. "When the time was right. Drunk and in public is _not_ the right time!"

" _And_ Poe's all, believes in the Force and stuff, and I’m as atheist as they come—and he and Karé fought a lot. Anyway, we're not getting back together, annit was a long time ago, so. You don’ need to worry," Iolo slurred helpfully. " _But_ we do think _you_ should know what _we_ know after...two years of dating."

"It wasn't two _standard_ years," Poe said a bit helplessly, wondering if this night could get any worse.

Maz couldn't possibly have meant talk about _this_.

"Um," Finn said, feeling a little like Poe and Karé and Iolo were speaking a language he didn't understand. He tried again. "Uh, maybe not here?" he asked. Rey nodded and got up, bumping Iolo in the shoulder so he'd get up too, while Finn nudged a sullen Poe and laughing Karé toward a door that surely led somewhere less crowded. He hoped so, anyway.

"I'm going to kill you," Poe hissed when he had Karé and Iolo briefly alone.

"Don't get mad at _us_ for _your_ inability to talk to your godsdamned fiancés, Dameron!" Karé retorted, loud enough that Finn and Rey surely heard.

"And there's the famous tempers flaring, as an illustration," Iolo said, ushering them into a private booth and sitting them down.

Finn took Poe by the hand and pushed him to sit between himself and Rey, while Iolo and Karé sat across from them. "Poe, love, would you like a chance to explain first, before Karé or Iolo can beat you to it? I mean, we knew you dated people before us, so I don’t see why you didn’t want to tell us about dating them?" he asked. On Poe's other side, Rey nodded mute encouragement.

Poe pressed his lips together and blew air out his nose. "I know, I’m sorry. Are you guys mad at me? For not telling you?" he asked quietly, trying to pretend that his drunk exes weren't watching them. "It's just I thought it would be weird, even though it's not, it shouldn't be, my relationship with them is strictly professional and I love you guys, I just didn't know when to bring it up—"

"No, not mad. A little surprised you didn't tell us...but not that much," Finn said thoughtfully. He'd figured something had once gone on between the three, from off-handed comments made by various pilots. It didn't bother him. But Maz was right, Poe was very bad at talking sometimes—not that Finn was much better, which was most of why he hadn’t said anything.

"Why would you think we would be mad about you having dated Iolo and Karé?" Rey asked, surprised. It wasn't like he was going to suddenly decide to go back to them, and neither of them did anything to encourage him—they were happy for him, clearly. “You thought we didn’t know?”

"Wait, you _knew_?" Poe cried, and then put his head in his hands to recalibrate. Okay, of course they knew, and of course they didn't care. This was Rey and Finn. "Then I feel sorry _and_ stupid," he said with a smile, kissing each of their hands. "Thanks, I really don't deserve you two..."

"See, this is a friendly conversation," Karé declared, pouring a round of whiskey for everyone. "The proper care and feeding of Poe Dameron."

"They take perfect care of me, thanks," Poe said, getting defensive again.

"Maz said to talk, remember, Dameron?" Iolo said. Poe was being especially prickly, so Rey reached for his hand, holding it in her palm and drawing lazy, thoughtless designs on it with her fingertips.

"Yeah, because I'm _sure_ Maz Kanata had bondage and masochism specifically in mind," Poe snapped before he realized what he was saying. He put his head back in his hands. 

There was a sudden silence in the booth. Rey paused. Finn blinked and tried to parse what Poe had just said. He knew what those words _meant_ , but… "Um, what?" Finn asked eventually.

Even without doing anything like reading his mind, Rey could tell Poe was uneasy. She continued her distracted (and distracting) drawing.

“Maker help me.” Poe pressed his face into his hand, wishing the sky would open up and take him into it. But Rey was tracing patterns on his hand and Finn's knee was pressed against his, so he owed it to them to—try.

"Gods, okay. Okay.” He paused, tried again, stopped, realized he was making this into a bigger deal the longer he took. “It's a...sex thing, a thing I like, only I haven’t said anything because it’s—not unusual, but, well, I assumed you wouldn’t like it. And anyway it’s not— _really_ not—a big deal in the scheme of things. Hence me figuring I'd take it to my grave," he said with a small chuckle: "If it weren't for my meddling pilots."

"It's not necessarily about sex," Iolo offered, and Poe glared at him.

"It's a kind of foreplay, basically, though Iolo’s right, for some people, it’s not about the sex. You know, it's different for everybody. So," Poe said, and took a deep breath. "Things that turn me on. Besides _you guys_ , I mean, all the time, every day. But I also like—sometimes— _rarely_ , even—I like when it hurts, and I like—okay, let me start over."

"He liked the handcuffs," Karé supplied, since they were going to be dead of old age before Poe got to it.

"I did _not_!" Poe growled.

"Tell me you didn't go off in that room to have sex."

Poe's face was instantly red. "Well, but, it's _different_ ," Poe stammered. Fuck, he should not be doing this drunk. "Okay, yes, I get it, enjoying being tied up and in pain during sex sounds very weird in our line of work, I get that. Especially with what happens to us, has happened to _me_. But it's _different_." Poe stood up, moved away, needing space, needing to pace or not have to look at anyone.

"Look, I have been _actually_ tortured, okay, and not just the once. I _don't_ like that, obviously. There is a difference and _this_ is something I enjoy that I don't want _them_ to take away from me, to ruin for me, because then they _win_..." He was getting too passionate, and he always got emotional when he was drunk. He had to turn away to blink. He wasn't broken, damn it.

"Anyway," Poe finally went on, because Finn and Rey weren't saying anything, "I didn't want to ask you because our lives are what they are, and it's not like I _need_ it to be happy. Kriff, I’m marrying you two, I don’t need anything else! It's just, when we're safe and it's someone I trust…" He gave up, shrugging helplessly. "Just please don't—think I'm sick, or weird," he looked at Finn and Rey in turn, feeling weak and shaky. "Plenty of people are into this kind of thing..."

“Us, for example,” Iolo beamed. “I’m with Poe on this one, though he’s more of a switch and I pretty consistently bottom. I _promise_ it feels real good.”

"That's what we're here for," Karé supplied. “To…sort of help explain this.”

Rey stood pulled Poe to her, putting her arms around him and hugging him before leaning back enough to smile at him. "Poe," she said, "We already know you're weird. It's one of your charms." This made Finn chuckle, even if he was a little unclear about what it was Poe wanted. The idea seemed so foreign to him. But he owed it to him to figure it out.

Poe sighed into Rey's arms, but didn't quite relax yet. "Thanks," he huffed at Rey, not entirely sure that made him feel better.

"Is that why you like it when I pull your hair?" Finn asked. "But—I don't understand. I'm sorry, I'm trying—I’ll try harder. I want to understand. Do you enjoy it when it hurts? _Because_ it hurts?" he asked. He held his hands out to Poe and smiled reassuringly.

"Yes!" Poe said. "Yeah, you see, I mean it's more of the same, pulling my hair, whatever, just kicking it up a notch. I'm an adrenaline junkie, right? That's really all it is. I tattoo my entire back and eat spicy food and fly starships, for kriff's sake, I mean...I like the rush…" He shrugged. “So it’s just… _more_ of that.”

"It helps him come down," Karé said. "After a tough mission, or even a big victory. Releases endorphins—"

"Yeah, but I don't _need_ that, Karé," Poe protested. He looked at Finn and Rey nervously. "Stop saying it like it’s something they _have_ to do. I know it's a lot to ask, and you shouldn't feel pressured to do this, no matter how much it can help me...it _won’t_ help me if you’re not comfortable with it."

Rey turned to Karé. "Well, like _how_ hurt?" she asked. "Hair pulling is one thing..."

"Whatever you think you could get into. Poe is pretty easy to please. I mean I wouldn't _start off_ with face-slapping, but in the heat of the moment—"

“ _Karé!”_ Poe shouted, putting his face in both his hands.

Face slapping? The hair-pulling Finn understood, the way he understood that he liked it when they sometimes got a little rough in bed, or when the gentle arm-scratches progressed to something a little less gentle. It made him shiver and feel good. But he didn't understand, at all, why someone would _want_ to be hurt, or hurt someone else unless they were angry. "But—why?" he asked, distressed by Karé's suggestion, and even Rey looked a little concerned.

"We like Poe—why would we want to _hurt_ him?" she asked.

"Okay," Iolo said, raising his hands and glaring at Karé and Poe. "Both of you, sit down, let me try. Rey, c'mere." He gave Rey and Finn a gentle and inviting smile. "I promise, Poe's not asking you to _hurt_ him. You can try a step up from things you already do, and see how it goes. Pull his hair a little harder. Try scratching or biting when you normally would, just harder than you normally would. The point is, just _look_ at his reaction. I promise you won’t be disappointed. He kinda hurts real pretty, if you catch my drift—you can just tell when he's _into_ it." He gave Poe an almost fond smile, and Poe relaxed another fraction. "You can work up from there. Find out what you like and what he likes—some people like light hitting or spanking, on the ass or thighs where it hurts less and you’re not likely to cause injury, or you can go with pinching, or scratching, or use hot wax. Basically, anything you negotiate beforehand is fine, if you want it. Some people _do_ handle face slapping or knifeplay in very safe and pre-negotiated ways, and if everyone likes it, that’s great for them. If that freaks you out, then don’t do it. Point is, a big point here, we should try not to shame anyone for liking whatever it is they like. If Poe suggests something you don’t think you could go for, tell him, but don’t make him feel bad about it." Iolo was seeming suddenly strangely lucid, which was nice.

“Okay,” Rey said, because that was a lot to think about, and she nodded. “I think I get it. Can you tell me—why? Like, is there a point to this? You said it wasn’t sex.”

Karé leaned in again, smiling brightly. "Yeah. There's a whole science behind it, and Poe has books on it. It's honestly better understood than the Force. Pain, just like pleasure, releases endorphins, and that combined with some adrenaline and of course the seratonin from sexytimes, anyway, results in a nice high."

"We call it 'flying,'" Iolo said. “Where you sort of—the one being hurt, anyway—go into a kind of trance. It’s—really nice. Better than sex itself, sometimes.”

"Then we do something called aftercare: normal post-coital cuddling, though sometimes you need more, like water and blankets and stuff, maybe a salve if things got rough, and then you come down from that high really relaxed,” Karé added. “It can happen to the one doing the hurting, too—the high, anyway—helps me feel really focused. I expect with that mystic Force mumbo-jumbo you got going on, it’d be fantastic to share it."

Finn thought about this and now that he had the gist, he found he still had questions—several of them, in fact—but it seemed weird to ask them in front of Karé and Iolo. Instead, he smiled hesitantly at them and glanced over at Poe. "I'm still not sure I have everything  _entirely_  clear," he told them, "But I think I understand more of it." After all, it had to be weird that _he_ liked being bossy and telling Poe what to do as much as he liked it when Poe and Rey both took control and made him beg for what he wanted from them. Finn _really liked_ that exchange of power (which he supposed was weird, too, because so much of his life he'd had nothing but other people's power shoved in his face, and being told that the First Order's power was meant to rule everyone else), and what Poe wanted sounded like it was related to that. Maybe they were all a little weird, and that was fine. He just didn't want to mess up.

"Maybe we can continue this conversation somewhere not here?" Rey asked, and both Iolo and Karé laughed and got up.

"I think that's our cue to leave them alone to sort this," Iolo said, and pointedly shifted the whiskey out of Karé's reach before steering her back toward the bar.

When they'd left, Finn looked at Poe, who was strangely quiet, and sighed.

"I'm afraid I'll hurt you," he admitted. "But I want to make you happy." Maz had said to listen, after all. Rey, who looked merely thoughtful, touched him on the arm.

"Yeah," Poe said, and sighed. He was grateful, he supposed, to his exes for bringing this up, but he was glad now that they were alone. "I get that. It's—" his nostrils flared. "You understand now why I didn't want to bring this up... _ever_. It's asking a lot from you. It’s asking so much, I get that. And if it doesn't work out, if it's not something you like, I'm serious, I _don't_ —want you to do it for my sake. It won't _work_ like they said if we're not all on the same page. It’s not worth it. I love you two so much, what I like during sex is so karking insignificant next to how much I love you—"

“Okay, Poe,” Rey hummed, pulling him into a hug and kissing his hair. “We love you, too. And this isn’t the first I’ve heard of this, so you can stop with the thinking you’re corrupting our innocence or something. On Jakku there was—we had a brothel. Where you could pay for lots of things...so I heard enough to get that people enjoy this, enough to pay money for it. And I don't want you to ever have to..."

It was Poe's turn to look horrified. "Stars and skies, Rey, I _wouldn't_ ," he insisted. Of all the many stupid and depraved things Poe had done in his time, he had never paid for sex.

Rey nodded, satisfied, and kissed his forehead. "I mean, it isn't any more weird to me than sex is _anyway_ , so..." And at that Poe manage a laugh, so she leaned in to cuddle him, since he looked like he needed it.

There was a silence for a few moments. "Okay," Finn finally said. "You said it's like when one of us pulls your hair—but that doesn't _hurt_ , does it?" Finn asked.

“Not usually, no.”

"But if it did—like if I pulled harder...you'd like that?" It was somewhere to start, anyway. 

This was going to be a long conversation. "Finn," Poe said. "I like _everything_ you do. Both of you. We don't—look, if this has you upset, I don't want to—we should stop talking about it." Yeah, it was going to be a real long conversation if he couldn't even finish it.

"Poe. Finn, please," Rey said. "We're talking _now_. Let's just—we’re _glad_ to know this, Poe, stop wishing Karé and Iolo were dead or whatever it is you're thinking. If it's all true, what Iolo and Karé say, I think it could be fun. Something I could be more involved with, you know, the non-sex part, and…" she shrugged and smiled. "You know I like being in charge.”

Poe huffed, and managed a smile. "Okay," he said, and turned back to Finn, trying to answer his question. "Yes. I like when you pull my hair. If you pulled it til my eyes watered I'd like that, too. I mean, don't pull it _out_ , right. It's—it’s not like I’m turned on by receiving actual injury, that’s not what were after. It's not real pain, like when you're fighting someone. It's more like sparring." Poe licked his lips. "What has you worried, Finno?"

"I don't _know_ ," Finn said, "I'm afraid I'll hurt you," he repeated. "Like, accidentally. Not in the good way, like accidentally injure you. And I don't want you to think I'm...well, I _mad_ at you. If I do it wrong. Because I probably will." He sighed deeply. He was _missing_ something, obviously, because even Rey understood it, and she wasn't nearly as confused or bothered by this as he was.

"Okay, okay, those are valid and fair," Poe said. "First, ah, we probably won't—I can envision—and you know, we don’t have to, this is still super hypothetical, but—I don’t think we’ll _ever_ do anything where you could even accidentally cause me irreparable harm. I mean, this is you, Finn, you have the fine motor control of a surgeon, so you _accidentally_ hurting me isn't any more of a problem than when we have vanilla sex, or, hell, when we're sparring. And just like with everything, there's boundaries and consent and, you know, negotiation. Usually I—people, when they like this sort of thing, they have a safeword. Something that's not 'No' or 'Stop' because sometimes that’s fun to say when you—uh—"

Finn's face told him he should have stopped talking before he started that sentence.

"Oh my gods, I'm just freaking you out more." Poe stood up again. He panicked better when he was standing up.

"No, it's all right," Rey said, patting the seat next to her, but Poe didn't sit. "I get it. It's a game. You pretend not to like it, even though you do?"

Poe waffled a bit, but nodded. "Yeah. Sorta. Yeah."

Rey gave a firm nod, logging that away. "Good. Your safeword could be 'Starkiller.' It means we need to stop. And hearing something like that will pretty well kill the mood, I think."

Poe nodded. "Sure. Yeah. Good. And—and I _won't_ think you're mad at me, Finn, that's not what this is about. How would I think you’re mad at me if I _asked_ you to do this? This is—it makes me feel like I've done good, okay? I know it makes no sense, it—" he scrubbed a hand through his hair, grunting in frustration, until a thought struck him, a last ditch effort to get them on the same page. Maybe he should have started with this. "Okay. When we got back from Mortis, you remember that? And I was sick and being a little shit and—what did I do? When I scared you and pissed you off—after we got back."

"Of course I remember Mortis," Finn said. Lots of no sleep, Poe running himself ragged and refusing to just _rest_ , he remembered all that. “You snuck out to work on _Black One_ in the middle of the night.” Finn had been angry, actually. "I came after you because you were going to get hurt," he said.

"And you fucked me in a supply closet, right?" Poe said, grinning.

"He what where?" Rey cried, looking between them both and narrowing her eyes. That wasn't fair. 

"In a supply closet. On the floor. Hard, and fast." Poe's mouth was already dry just thinking about it. "And we only had the one packet of lube and you barely stretched me and you were holding my hands down above my head."

Finn nodded, licking his lips.

"And you were even mad at me but you didn't _hurt_ me, except in ways that I liked. And—and it was really fantastic sex, right, I mean, I came _twice_. And afterwards I slept like a kriffing baby. I wasn't irritable anymore, I wasn't restless, I didn't hate myself as much as usual..."

"I remember that—I thought it was kind of cute, because you were really, really out of it after. But I thought you were just tired...I almost had to carry you back." He thought. "I _did_ have to carry you back." And Poe had finally slept, for the whole night, and not immediately run off to fix something or update BB-8.

“Yeah.” Poe sat again, but this time across from them, and picked at his cuticles. "I, ah. So this kind of—thing—play, sex, whatever you want to call it—it helps me feel good. I’d never think you were doing it because you were actually angry with me. If we were fighting seriously, we wouldn’t be having sex at all."

"Okay, so you were like that, you felt good after, _because_ it kind of hurt?" he asked. Personally, he'd kind of enjoyed being in charge of the situation and watching Poe come apart for him so thoroughly. Making Poe just stop and relax and go to bed (or allow himself to be fucked like that) felt like taming a hurricane.

Rey snorted, perhaps catching some of this, or maybe she could just see the way Finn and Poe were sort of staring at each other.

“ _Yes_ ,” Poe said, almost afraid to breathe.

"That was...kind of an accident, though," he said.

"Well, then you're a natural," Poe said, now feeling like he could breathe a little. "I mean, right, I get that you like bottoming, and I'm not trying to change any dynamics here. I know _you_ like being held down and teased and fucked. And I enjoy doing that to you, Finn, you make me lose my mind when you let me wrestle you down and make love to you, or fuck your brains out. But I also enjoy—the reverse. When you do that to me. And you can think of it like—I like _more_ of that, but less often. Does that make any sense?”

"Sort of. But we should still go slow. Um. I don't think I will ever be comfortable with the whole...the slapping thing," he admitted. But the rest he could learn to like (and maybe he already _did_ ).

"Okay, yeah. Yeah. Everyone's allowed to have hard no's in this," Poe said, reaching across the table to take their hands. "We can just see how it goes. Plan it for—sometime when we all have an evening free and nothing to get to immediately the next day. Ideally, I'll be sore," he said with a smirk, but Rey and Finn still looked nervous. "I'm sorry for not—saying anything. About Karé and Iolo, or—about—" he shook his head. "I mean, shit! You understand my problem, right? Here I am talking to the top contestants for Most Fucked Up Childhood and Exposure to Sexuality Ever and I'm asking you to..." he gave up, unable to speak, and looked away.

Poe _radiated_ shame, now, sick with it, and it almost brought Rey to tears to feel it. "Poe, stop that," she demanded, because it made her feel ill, too. "You act like you're asking us to kill a puppy. Kriff it, Poe Dameron. You're _offering_ yourself to us, aren't you? In a way I don’t think you ever have before. You're a gift, not a...liability, or a chore, or whatever it is you think you're—"

"Okay, okay, get out of my head," Poe laughed wetly.

"You know this would have been easier to explain if you just _let_ me see it in your head."

"What, and miss this chance for emotional constipation and self-loathing?" Poe shrugged, feeling drained. “Be my guest, if you think you can get any more out of me. I don’t even know half the time.”

Finn reached across the table to Poe, since he couldn't really lean all the way across to hug him, which was what he really wanted to do. "I think Maz would have known," he laughed, "And she specifically said to talk. And she told me to listen." He was pretty sure she hadn't told Rey to do anything except go get Luke. "So I think we are safe from any Maz-related wrath?" he said, but it was more of a hopeful question.

Poe groaned. “Oh, gods, Maz Kriffing Kanata just forced me to talk about my sex life, didn't she?” he said, as if realizing what had just happened for the first time. Maz Kanata: bar owner, pirate, collector, and sex therapist.

Rey laughed. "Okay, come here," she said, and stood to pull both of her boys to their feet for a hug.

Poe relaxed into them, feeling safe and loved (and unworthy). "Thanks," he said, and couldn't say more, still couldn't quite look at them for a long while. "Bed? Maz has got guest rooms this way, or we can bunk on the ship...?" He was glad to change the subject.

Finn didn't really want to stay on board a First Order ship, afraid it would trigger the worst kind of nightmares or, even worse, another of those episodes where he forgot who he was. Rey and Poe could have _died_ on that ship—he wanted as little to do with it as possible. "I'd rather a guest room than having you guys on that ship, even though it's safe now. Besides, Maz will have real beds," he told them. Since Poe knew where they were, Finn looked over at him and nodded in the general direction of out. "After you, Mr. Future Poe Dameron-Kenobi," he said, and Rey snorted at the name.

Poe snorted, too, and kissed Finn's cheek, and then Rey's hair, and took their hands and led them out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the gratuitous discussing of kinky sex and no delivery. 
> 
> I have read and seen some very excellent and sensitive portrayals of Poe being decidedly _not_ into bondage and/or pain, especially post-Finalizer, and I love them all. Here, we wanted to explore something different: sensation-seeking Poe who has known what he likes _before_ all this, and who is very concerned with his experiences of actual capture and torture not ruining an otherwise fun (safe, sane, and consensual) part of sex for him. 
> 
> Add into the mix Rey and Finn living with pain as a bad thing all their lives and you've got struggles. Discussion in the comments?


	9. Chapter 9

Luckily Poe didn't have to face Karé and Iolo again, but Maz was sitting at her usual table and Poe swung them by.

"Thanks again for your hospitality, Maz. Can we grab a room?" he asked.

She gave him a careful look, and for a second Poe feared she'd ask whether they had _talked_ or not, and he wasn’t sure how much more mortification he could take in one evening, but she only smiled. "Up the stairs and to the left. Those beasts destroyed my right guest wing. Rey," she said, looking up. "Luke told me what he knew about your family. You have a legacy to uphold now…but not necessarily the same one as the rest of your family." She sat back. "Now, shoo, off to bed with you. I think Finn has had a very trying day."

Poe grinned softly. "Yeah, let's go," he agreed, leading them down the hall indicated to a small but lavishly decorated room that was so far vacant, and grabbing sheets from a cupboard on the way.

While they made up the bed, Finn slowly but surely came down from the adrenaline rush that had been his entire day, and kept reaching out occasionally just to touch Poe or Rey and reassure himself that they were alright. Unlike Poe, he didn't really like that kind of a rush, but it was something he dealt with in order to do his job. He supposed the day had been as long for Rey and Poe as it had for him, in the full knowledge that if anything went wrong it would be a disaster. But they'd had each other, and he hadn't.

"I might have sort of raised my voice at the General," he told them, once the bed was made and they were lazily getting ready for sleep in the tiny washroom, helping each other with a shirt here or a sock there, just to be in each others' space. It was sweet and familiar and he was pretty sure they all needed it.

Poe's eyes bugged out at Finn's admission, managing even to be distracted from taking Rey's shirt off. "Whoa!" he said, and laughed nervously. "Wish I'd been there to see that." And then he grew more serious and touched Finn's cheek with his knuckles. "Rather than being the cause of it."

"You know I never did hear how you got on the mission. The plan was just for Iolo and Karé and Luke—though I hoped you'd come along," Rey said.

Poe, sitting down to unlace his boots, was now imagining how this briefing must have gone, since Finn and BB-8 had been left behind. It could have been a positive shit show, and he smiled at the thought—a narcissistic part of him liked being important enough that their capture was able to _cause_ a stir like that. But of course it would, for Finn at least, and then he felt guilty.

"I'm sorry that we left you like that, Finn," Poe said. "For the record, I was against it, not telling you, but—"

"I'm _pretty_ sure part of the General's plan was to make you freak out so that you'd demand to come along," Rey said.

Poe grinned at that. "That is kind of your M.O., Finn." Finn had been the one to volunteer to land on Starkiller Base when Rey had been captured by Kylo Ren, and Poe would never forget the beautiful determination that had darkened his eyes. "Still," and he grew serious again. "But, I mean, you're a lieutenant now," Poe said, tugging up Finn's shirt, marked with his rank now, and pulling it off his head. "So she shouldn't have manipulated you like that. I'll probably have a few words with her. But. She can order you to do it next time." He leaned in to kiss Finn as Rey wrapped her arms around him.

"I was...not happy in the first place, and then she told me you didn't know the plan was to use you as bait, and I may have become a little bit upset with her and demanded she put me back on active status. She didn't even ask Dr. Kalonia, so I imagine we'll both get scolded for that," Finn explained, and touched the pin that marked his rank. He'd been mad, but mostly he'd been scared. "Anyway, she probably forgives me, right? Luke did." But Finn wasn’t exactly sure he had forgiven _her_.

Rey shrugged. “If she had a problem, I’m sure she would have dealt with it then.”

Poe grabbed Finn’s shoulders and just looked at him. "A Commissioned Officer of the Resistance," he breathed, impossibly proud. "Lieutenant Finn. Certainly better than a Captain FN-2-blue-alpha-seven-whatever of the First Order, shit." he tried to joke, but he was too emotionally exhausted to determine if it was funny.

Finn sat on the bed and tugged both Poe and Rey to sit with him. "You're both really okay? I was afraid we'd be too late and something would happen," he admitted.

" _Fine_ , love," Rey and Poe said together, with the same intonation. Finn ran a hand through Rey’s hair, and over Poe’s lip where it was split and still a bit puffy.

"I mean, it cut a little closer than I usually prefer, but it paid off big time," Poe said, worrying the cut with his tongue. “If that fucking ship links in to all the First Order’s nav computers…” The war would get a lot easier.

"Poe actually saved _me_ , and things went a lot smoother," Rey informed Finn. "I'm not sure I could have taken on Kylo Ren if I'd been in the same handcuffs."

Poe shook his head. "Hey, it was only you because you're small enough to hide inside the engine of a B-Wing and tough enough to protect me. It was a purely logical decision. It's not like I care about you at all." He winked.

"Poe Dameron!" she scolded, and whacked his arm. "That's another thing! When we get married, I want you to cut this Anything For The Resistance _bantha shit_! I’m going to write that into our wedding vows, so help me."

Poe frowned. "I mean, I'm still a starfighter pilot. I could still die in a milk run any day." Which didn't help. "But, okay, yes, we're getting married, we can all promise to consult each other before missions. Including Secret Jedi Business." He pointed a finger at her, and she nodded.

"Okay. Well, if you both promise me you’re okay, then I don't feel bad about doing this," Finn said, and laughed, turning quickly to tackle both of them backwards onto the bed. "Mmmmm, never letting you go," he told them as he bundled them together where he could get his arms around them and kiss them half to death. "Well, not ‘til morning, anyway." They were all his for the evening and over night, and he planned on making the most of it to assure himself that they were all really okay. "Comfy comfy Poe and Rey pillows. All mine," he said, the smile obvious in his voice, once he had arranged them to his liking.

Poe yelped as he went back with Finn on top of him, narrowly avoiding cracking his head on the bedpost (again, not the kind of pain he was going for).

"Finn, you'll smush us!" Rey squeaked.

"You're calling me fat? Poe, she says I'm fat!" Finn whined, and buried his face in Poe's neck.

"I'm not!" Rey scrunched around until she was comfortable, tickling Finn in the process and nearly kicking off a whole tickle battle before Poe showed no mercy in tickling, which was probably why Finn cut it off.

"Okay, okay—are we all comfortable?" Finn asked before things could get too rowdy. He was tired—mostly he wanted to sleep, preferably half on top of his loves.

"Poe, lift your arm," Rey said as she tried to get comfortable, and Poe, knowing exactly what she meant, raised his other arm just to be contrary. "No, your right!" She squeaked, and he raised his arm so she could tuck herself against his side and lean back against his shoulder. "There, now get on top," she said, wriggling so they made a tight seal between them, and a flat surface for Finn to lie on.

Poe muffled his voice like a comlink. "You are cleared for landing, over."

Finn snuggled down on top of Poe and Rey with a happy little hum. "I love you," he told them earnestly, and after kissing each of them once more, he rested his head on Rey's shoulder and closed his eyes for sleep.

"I love you, too," Poe said, stuffing another pillow under his head and shifting his knee to be more comfortable.

Rey grumbled. "He just got us back and he's falling asleep already?" she said impatiently.

Finn wanted to convince Rey that was exactly what he was doing, but he couldn't keep a straight face. Instead, he popped his head up and grinned at her. "Maybe being scared for your lives made me sleepy!" he suggested. "So sleepy I might just fall asleep right here." He wedged his arms more firmly around them. "Mmm yes right here is very good," he added, even though this was not actually the most comfortable—but he barely had to turn his head to kiss one or the other of them, and he did so. "Okay but actually—how are you still so bony?" he asked Rey, because she was jamming her knee into his leg. Poe was much less bony, and therefore much more comfortable to sprawl on, which Finn soon discovered when Rey got too wiggly to be a comfortable pillow.

"Clearly we need to feed her more," Poe laughed, Finn bouncing on his chest. "Or you could rest your head riiiight here," he suggested, poking her in the side boob.

Rey laughed. "Hey, I need more of Poe's massages to be soft!" she complained, but wriggled, trying to make herself more appealing.

"Oh, now this is my fault?" Poe said, nibbling her ear in retaliation.

"That's true. Poe, you said she's all bone and knots, didn't you?" Finn asked thoughtfully. Now that Rey mentioned it, he really wanted to do this for both of them—massage out all the knots and pains of both their muscles, until they were both just puddles of melted Rey and Poe. "Let me?” he asked Rey, who immediately wormed her way onto her belly so Finn could rub her back. He looked over at Poe. "Your turn next," he told him and leaned over to give him a quick kiss.

Poe blinked. "Finn, you're a marvel," he said, grinning and rolling onto his side as Rey flipped over to let Finn massage her back.

As soon as Finn got his hands on her they went quiet, Finn in concentration, Rey in bliss, Poe mesmerized just watching them.

"Kylo Ren would have beaten me if Master Luke wasn't there," Rey admitted with a sudden sigh. "He...has gotten stronger, I think. He's still an idiot, and he's still unstable, but—" She had been _scared_. 

Poe laughed suddenly. "Oh, you should have seen him when I showed him the engagement ring. He totally has the hots for you, Rey."

"Oh, I know. _Gross_."

"And I made him _jealous_ …” Poe laughed, doing a little dance like he’d just scored a goal in boloball. “But—that was...dumb. He really might have killed me."

"Or we could _not_ talk about Kylo Ren while we're in the bedroom— _ever_?" Finn said, and then apologized as he found an especially bad knot that made Rey hiss when he tried to loosen it. He brushed his fingertips gently over her back before trying again. This time when he pressed his fingers into the knot, Rey tensed only for a moment before relaxing, and the knotted muscle relaxed with her. Finn sighed and went back to just gently rubbing her back, smiling like a complete dope at the way she appeared to already be falling half asleep. "Seriously, if we need a safe word..." he added.

Poe guffawed. "Kylo Ren" would make a great safeword, actually. He ran his hand through Rey's hair, and then over Finn's back, rubbing his shoulders.

"Let me in?" Rey whispered, grunting as Finn worked on another knot. "Missed you two. With me. Sensing you. Alive. Happy. Here."

Poe hummed and nodded. "I couldn't be happier than I am just watching you."

As soon as he felt Rey nudge at him, Finn welcomed her, having equally missed the familiarity of having her there. He was so used to her, and to Poe through her, when he paid enough attention, that it would feel strange to _not_ be aware of them. Even while they'd been temporarily captured, he'd been aware of their presence, if only just. He finished working on the knot he'd found and then sat back on his heels, letting his sense of them surround him. Eventually, he smiled and blinked himself back to reality. "Your turn?" he asked Poe, while Rey snuggled up next to his leg and Poe's side, being clingy and cuddly as she was sometimes wont to be. Finn bent down to kiss her, just because she was cute when she snuggled so thoroughly against them. "You have a clinging Ewok," he informed Poe with a fond laugh.

"Buddy, I thought you'd never ask," Poe said, and turned his attention to Rey as he got into position. "Don't tell anyone, but I love clinging Ewoks," he whispered to her and kissed her lips bright pink before snuggling down next to her.

"It's all right, I think everyone knows," she said, linking their fingers. Then she lifted her head. “Poe, take off your shirt. Why are you still wearing it?”

“Umm,” Poe said, but they were both inside his head and knew instantly why he wasn’t wearing his shirt.

“Are you _hurt_?” Rey demanded, as Finn grabbed the hem of his shirt and hauled it off his head.

“No, no, it’s just bruising, but it looks worse—”

“ _Poe_ ,” Finn said, and something in his voice, while it wasn’t necessarily angry or scary, required an answer.

“It’s not serious,” Poe said. “I didn’t want you to worry…any _more_. Ren and Phasma kinda threw me around a bit, you know. I'm sure Finn took worse from tumbling around the bridge. I can breathe just fine, no broken bones, I swear.” But there was bruising all over one side of his back and arm, and his wrists were still angry and red. “Just bruises. Dr. K would laugh at me if I tried to show up in Medical like this. I’ve gotten worse from my safety harness.”

Finn and Rey glowered, fingertips and eyes exploring him. But they found no serious damage, and he could answer all of their concussion questions despite the tender spot on the back of his head, and Poe was already sighing into their hands.

“Where is there left to massage you?” Finn asked as they turned Poe onto his front. “I don’t want to hurt you…”

 _This again._ Poe sighed. “It’s okay, you don’t have to—”

“No, I want to. I’m going to. Just—tell me if it hurts?” Finn paused. “I mean, I guess—bad-hurt? I don’t know about you, anymore,” he added with a chuckle.

Poe grinned, and relaxed as Finn laid his hands on his back. Rey curled close, a clinging Ewok again.

"Mm, oh, that's good, Finn, harder, please," Poe moaned eventually. Even though Finn could be a lot harder and he wouldn’t mind, this was heavenly. Poe had had Rey and Finn ticking and scratching his back a lot, exploring his tattoos, but a proper massage was rare. And it felt so good Poe was sure he was going to melt into the mattress. Finn was a natural with this as everything. "When do we get to do you?" Poe wondered blearily.

"Tomorrow," Rey mumbled against the pillow.

"Mm, Finn, yes, oh—oh yeah right there harder!" he cried, jacking up as Finn found a good knot (he had them a lot in his neck and shoulders). Rey was laughing at him, because he was carrying on so, though Finn tried to take his hands away until Poe begged him to keep going. “That’s a knot, not a bruise, please, it feels good! Ah yes ow ow _yeahhhh_ ," Poe grunted, finally sagging back to the pillow as the pressure from Finn's fingers worked it out. "Oh moons, yeah," he gasped. "Thanks. Ow."

Finn laughed, scratching gently up and down Poe's back before tending to the knots in his lower back, apologizing when he mistook a rib for a stubborn knot. "Okay, you get more of these, if I can't even tell between knots and bones! How is that even possible?!" he asked, running soothing hands up and down either side of Poe's spine with a little bit of pressure.

"Worse than me?" Rey asked.

Finn nodded emphatically. “You’re just bony. He’s…tight,” he said, working on the back of his neck, where there was no bruising but was full of knots.

Rey laughed. “You’re too cavalier to be this stressed, Poe.”

"I am, ow, a _very_ good actor," Poe grunted, and winked. "Seriously, I'm not usually this—ah!—bad. I'm _sure_ I developed all of these in the last...oh, let’s see, when did we start talking to Kun and Arana? Ooh." Poe relaxed, moaning like he was in bliss or being killed, and Rey laughed.

"No need to be stressed about any of that, love," she whispered. "I'm a little bit excited to try it, myself." If Poe’s broadcasting right _now_ was anything to go by, Rey could tell he certainly enjoyed the painful parts of the massage as much as the pleasurable ones.

Poe opened one eye. "Really?"

Rey shrugged. "Yeah but—well. It makes you happy, right? And that makes me feel good, too. And I like being so close to you both, and that you trust each other and trust me," she explained. “And Karé and Iolo described it as flying, which sounds like it might be kind of incredible with the Force bond."

“Hey, that's how I can prove to you I'm not lying and not crazy, right? We get really deep into each other and—" Poe sat up, rolling to one side and up on an elbow to look at Finn and Rey. "I just, I want to be clear. All I need is you two, really, forever. Anything else is bonus." He smiled. "Kiss me?"

"Hmmmm, dunno if I should..." Finn said, and promptly crumbled, melting against Poe to cover his face in kisses. Rey laughed at them again—she had the brightest laugh, like sunshine, and he wanted to hear it all the time—and joined in, resulting in something of a cuddle pile with Poe on the bottom.

Rey pulled Finn down on top of Poe with her and kissed them both at the same time. "You both like teasing too much," she said.

Poe laughed and closed his eyes halfway, loving the press of their bodies on his. "I like teasing just the right amount, thanks." He hummed, as if debating admitting something. "I gotta say, I—so, they didn’t hurt me, and Ren didn’t even mind-fuck me again, but—Phasma was—and I don't think Leia or anyone thought—but she was _literally_ going to execute me, and not threaten-to-kill-me-so-I-talk...so. Good timing, Finn."

Rey was horrified, and dug her fingers into his arm. "Poe. Stop talking," she growled, and pulled Finn and Poe into a fierce hug.

"I'm never letting you two out of my sight again," Finn informed them, his voice catching. "Never ever. I love and you're mine always." He squirmed his arms free so he could hold them both, face buried in Poe's hair. "Please don't ever scare me like that again." He turned to nuzzle Rey's hair as well, and closed his eyes. They were here, they were safe, and they weren't going anywhere before morning—partly because he wasn't going to let them even if he was asleep.

"Only time I want to be out of your sight is if I'm in a fighter, or your eyes are closed," Poe said, grinning, and relaxed entirely on an exhale. He had been scared, but he had also hoped and trusted, knowing Rey and Finn would watch out for him, always, as he would always do everything to protect them. It was the safest he had ever felt.

"Well, I'm tired," Rey said eventually.

Poe shrugged. "I can't tell if I'm exhausted or wired. But..." He looked down at himself, still covered by two gorgeous young things. "Guess I'm not moving, either way."

"Definitely not," Rey said. “We’re not hurting you, like this?”

“The only thing that really hurts is my lip, and only because you two insist on kissing me all the time,” Poe laughed.

“And you keep biting it,” Finn said. “Stop that, or it won’t heal. Where’s our bacta gel?”

“Ew, I don’t want that on my mouth,” Poe said, and, with an effort, stopped worrying his lip. “Got that one telling Ren his nose is ugly.”

Rey cackled, suddenly, and then Poe and Finn laughed, too.

Finally, Rey sighed, tucking her head against Poe’s neck, still chuckling. She rested her hand on Poe’s chest, her fingers playing with the hair there.

"Ugh, why do you do that? You're so weird," Poe complained. He hadn't had a chance to shave or wax it in...a long while, apparently, if it was long enough for Rey to play with. “Don’t you have a Wookiee copilot for this?”

"It's just body hair,” Rey said. “I like it. It’s good body hair. It doesn't make you look old like the beard does."

Poe chuckled. "Thanks, but I've encountered my mortality enough times today." He squeezed them both, fingernails ghosting over Finn's skin.

Finn would have purred, if people could, but instead he shifted to lean into Poe's gentle scratches. He was content, and very comfortable, and becoming honestly sleepy, instead of the exhausted sort of bone-deep tired of too much adrenaline and the resulting crash. He snuggled up under Poe's shoulder, resting his ear on his chest so he could hear his heartbeat. "Gonna go to sleep," he warned them as he reached across Poe to rest his hand on Rey's hip.

"Kay," Rey said, snaking an arm around Finn's waist, because it was good to feel him. They felt calm and contented, finally forgetting and relaxing from their day and from their evening, and no one was hurt and everything was fine. Their presences were soothing to her mind, helping her slip into something like meditation before she slept.

"Thanks for coming after us, Finn," Poe said, after a long silence during which she thought they had both fallen asleep.

"Yeah. But next time you're coming _with_ us instead," Rey added.


	10. Chapter 10

They woke up the next morning shockingly well-rested, with enough time to laze about for a few minutes before they had to get back to the ship. Finn took the time to kiss both Rey and Poe into full consciousness, and smiled at them when they blinked sleepily up at him. "Morning, sunshines," he told them, and rolled off the bed to get dressed.

The defectors were already eating when Finn found them, though mostly they were picking at the unfamiliar food as if in question of its actual status as food.

"Take advantage of the real eggs while you can—we get the powdered kind, mostly," Finn suggested, before returning to Rey and Poe. Maz had pulled up a chair to their table and was watching the troopers with and unnerving steadiness.

"We have a problem," she informed the three of them as Finn sat down.

Maz led them to a more private table where they could keep an eye on things but not be overheard. "The good news: The young one with the broken leg is only interested in survival right now, so she'd go with anyone who offered that. I invited her to stay, and I can keep an eye on her. She goes by Sarala, now." Maz frowned as she stepped across their breakfast table, kicking cups casually. Poe lifted his breakfast as she passed, and motioned for Finn and Rey to do the same. "The bridge officer, Timons, you can trust, and she's smart and will have a lot of good Intel. The one called Punch is genuine, and Tova and Nova, two pilots it looks like, idolize Finn. Then there's Klif."

Poe stopped eating. "What about him?"

"That's the bad news. He does not mean the Resistance well. He will learn as much about you and get word to the First Order the first chance he can, or die trying. It's in his eyes. He's not entirely _here_." She sighed, and looked sad for the first time. "Perhaps his conditioning goes too deep. Maybe he's fanatical, or he may not even know he has been conditioned to betray you." She shook her head and clenched her fists. "This is why you have to win. I can keep Klif where he can do no harm until he comes around, or we figure out how to break that blasted conditioning."

Rey glanced over to where the fair-haired trooper sat laughing with the others at the strange food presented to them.

"Okay, this isn't going to go over well," she said, making sure her lightsaber was at her side.

Finn put his hand on Rey's arm and stepped ahead of her, going over to the table with a smile that the others mostly answered with smiles of their own. Curious, and a little worried, Rey followed after him. "Everyone ready to go who is going? Sarala, I heard you're staying, unless you've changed your mind—" she shook her head, "Klif, you'll stay here with her. Maz needs to speak with you. Is everyone else coming with us?" Finn asked.

There was a moment of confusion during which Klif looked positively angry, and Rey and Poe gathered toward Finn protectively.

"Stand down, trooper," Finn told him in his best commanding voice. "The matter is not open for negotiation. You're staying here, but you choose in what capacity. If you fight, you'll be locked up until Maz is reassured." After another tense moment in which no one moved, all the fight seemed to go out of all of the troopers. Finn, too, finally took a breath. "You're safe here. You will not be mistreated or locked away unless you give Maz just cause," he said gently, because the troopers now looked resigned and a little scared—certainly wary, and no longer as trusting as they'd been. Finn wanted to apologize, but that would have to happen later. For now, he turned to Rey and Poe for just a little reassurance and said, "We ready to go?"

"Uhh, yeah," Poe said, unable to look away from Finn, impressed and awed and a little scared and a little turned on all at once.

It was also kind of horrifying watch the troopers' total obedience.

"I'll find Karé and Iolo," Rey added, wondering if stormtroopers—even these ones—would hold a gun to their own heads if ordered to do so, and she began to appreciate how... _adjusted? strong? resilient?_ Finn, and even Deeks, were, to leave the Order after being so horribly indoctrinated. Rey was often angry at her life and her childhood, and though Finn had never gone hungry or been alone, she wouldn't have traded her life for his for anything.

She was confident she would not have been able to turn out as good as Finn had.

The troopers were so quiet on the way to the ship, so resigned and First-Order-proper that Finn started to wonder if he'd done the right thing after all, in turning Klif away. They could have taken him prisoner, certainly, but he hardly thought that would have helped. He already had no idea what to do with the half dozen in their brig—but he was hoping the General would have a solution. Even Punch, who had been the most trusting of the group, seemed to have shut off now.

With their minds now recalibrating how they might have to deal with this influx of ex-stormtroopers (Poe was imagining the horrors upon horrors of paperwork alone, not to mention dealing with the indoctrination, the trauma, “normal” socialization, and, gods, would they all be racist like the Imperials were?), Poe and Rey eventually ended up in the cockpit, where Luke waited, looking like he had never left the bridge. Luckily, Iolo and Karé were hungover, so everyone was quiet.

Poe laughed to himself, to think that he believed rescuing and helping defecting stormtroopers would be easy. It actually made him feel ill. But, hey, they were people, and they deserved a few breaks, as many as they could be given.

After they took off, Finn found an out-of-the way place to sit and consider how to proceed, while Poe and Rey flew the ship with Karé and Iolo. It was quiet, and the stormtroopers were silent, and eventually Rey joined him.

"Autopilot," she said when he raised his eyebrows in question, and joined him to watch their defectors. She recognized the body language, and wasn't overjoyed to note it. "Are they scared?" she asked, because that was the one thing that seemed incongruous. They were jumpy, and keeping an eye on everything at once. Finn shrugged.

"I think they're trying to sort out what just happened. It's the sort of thing the First Order would say just before they had someone executed, even though I tried to explain he'd be safe." Finn sighed. He might as well have told them banthas could fly, or Hoth could be warm, for all they believed him. And he didn't have the slightest idea what to do about it.

…

Poe had radioed ahead, so when they landed, Leia was there to oversee things. Jessika, Deeks, and Connix had all been assigned to a Stormtrooper Recovery Task Force (to be renamed later), with Rey and Luke consulting, and all answerable to Finn, which Poe tried to hastily explain to Finn before they landed ("So, uh, no pressure, buddy. Welcome to command.").

Leia had requested all available personnel to form rank for their arrival, at Finn's suggestion, in case so much immediate disorder made their guests anxious.

And as they disembarked, she was waiting for them. She was a tiny woman, almost frail, which seemed to startle them, visually. The First Order would never put such a woman in charge, certainly not one who gave them such a kind smile.

"Welcome, friends," she said. "Welcome to the Resistance. I'm sure my Commander and his men have made it clear that you are not in any danger, and that we are grateful for whatever aid you may have given my men in the capture of the _Vapor_. You'll forgive us some precautions, but you are not prisoners. If you wish to join the Resistance, or give us any information on the First Order that you can, you will do so voluntarily. If you choose not to join or help, as your companions still in the brig or on Takodana have done, you will be treated fairly. For now, I'd like you to see Lieutenant Connix for barracks assignments, and Captain Pava will be going over some ground rules with you. Lieutenant Finn has vouched for you, and you answer to him. If you deviate from these rules, you'll lose privileges, but you won't be harmed. If you try to contact the Order or injure any of my equipment or men, you still won't be harmed, but you will never taste this much freedom ever again. Understood?"

After the General had spoken to them, Connix led the way to the barracks. The six-bunk room was clearly already being used, because one of the beds had blankets pulled haphazardly on top of it. Deeks bounded into the room after them and looked around in surprise, and maybe a little embarrassment. "I forgot to make my bed," he said sheepishly, and nodded around to the other beds. "Those are yours. We each get one of those lockers, and refreshers are down the hall," he explained. The closets already had clothes in them, the kind of loose-fitting training outfit that only came in three sizes. There were towels as well. “Side note, no one gets mad at you if you forget to make your bed here! Er, well, not really mad, anyway,” Deeks said, hastily throwing his blankets into some semblance of order at Connix’s glare.

"We'll show you where the freshers are and leave you to clean up, if you like. Take as long as you want, and when you're all finished, Jess can tell you the basic ground rules and answer questions," Connix told them, and while they figured out the showers (they seemed somewhat amazed that there were actual single stalls for privacy), the rest of the group had a short meeting to determine what was already being handled and what would need to be dealt with in the near future. Deeks was so excited he was about to bounce off the walls, until Jess gave him a long, quelling look.

"Okay, so, here are the rules we came up with, Finn, pending your approval, since I guess you know better how much we can trust them, and what kind of structure they need," Jess said, handing Finn a datapad. "No coms, supervised weapon use only, light duties in sort of a basic rotation so they can see what they like, regular psych evals, or something like that, with Dr. K. or Master Luke or...you, Finn? I was thinking a probationary period of four weeks while they figure things out, and we can move them up to full duties, and com and weapons access, pending approval from—well, you, the general, the doctor?"

"The General, their commanding officer, which would be Finn, and a psych eval would all be a good idea," Connix said, but then she liked paperwork. "The evaluation might come from Master Skywalker if Dr. Kalonia finds herself too busy."

"We also need to talk about how we might expand the operation for if and when this happens again. We'll need to find more psytechs, and people to offer to bunk up with a trooper or two. We'll need to make more runs to the prison colony we have a deal with, for the hard heads, too," Jess said. "And we don't want them to feel like they _have_ to join us. Finn?"

All eyes turned to Finn with a lot of questions, and Poe's words echoed in his mind: _Welcome to command._

Finn was pretty sure his head might explode, but this was something he could handle. He looked to Connix and Jess first. "I agree with both of you—though this batch is a little different, because Maz checked them out and says they're trustworthy. She found one who wasn't, and he stayed on Takodana with another one who wasn’t sure she wanted to join the Resistance. So we can probably trust these guys a little more than we would trust others," he told them. Then he scrubbed his hand through his hair, already dreading the nightmare that was going to be finding psytechs enough to help Dr. Kalonia. "I think I need to warn Dr. Kalonia about some things, in case they come up. Deeks, if you can come with me in case she had questions I can't answer, that would be good." Deeks nodded solemnly.

"This group has trust issues that neither Finn nor Deeks had, so keep that in mind and don't make it worse," Rey added, "And don't be shocked when you have to reinforce over and over that this is not the First Order. Last night they thought we were going to take away the one with the broken leg and…recycle her or something," Rey added.

"'Reclamate,' actually," Finn said, and when Rey made a horrified face at him, he cracked a smile. "It's the joke, sorry." Deeks grinned. Finn sighed. They stormtroopers would figure out in their own time that things were different here, but until then life might be more interesting for the whole base than they'd maybe expected.

"Yeah, that's a good point," Poe said. "To what extent—and how—should we brief the troops? Sorry to interrupt, but—Finn, Deeks, you guys were easy, and even we hit some bumps. I know people want to help, so give 'em some tips on what to watch out for, you know. Anything that would be potentially triggering or would cause an incident. We don't want any of these troopers getting into trouble over stupid shit, right?"

"And what about...um," Rey said, like Poe, feeling that she wasn't really supposed to be here. "Like, I dunno, some sort of training for 'normal'? Finn and I had Poe, and Deeks, you—"

"Are just still weird," Jess teased, and Deeks laughed.

"No, no! Hey, I could do that! I've figured out what normal is around here, I just don't act like it sometimes! C'moooonnn!" Deeks whined at Jess and Finn. "I can help!"

Finn narrowed his eyes thoughtfully at Deeks, who did his best to look normal, whatever that meant. Jess was grinning at him, and the longer he held still, the more she grinned, until he couldn't take it anymore. "I _promise_ I can do it, come on! Let me, I'm the only other stormtrooper who knows what it's like to defect!" he practically wailed, and Jess burst out laughing. Finn couldn't help it and laughed too, which only made Deeks grouchy.

"Okay, okay. You're still a weirdo, but you're right—and we could do a whole lot worse than them thinking you're the shining example of normal, weirdness and all," he said finally, taking pity, and all signs of grouchiness vanished from Deeks's demeanor.

"I'll do a good job, I promise. They'll be so normal you won't even believe it," he said, apparently very serious. That sorted, Finn turned to Poe.

"I think...I'll have to think—Deeks can help me with that, too—but it's a good idea to brief the troops. Could you and Rey help me? With coming up with things? And then we could talk to the General." He felt stupid asking for help, given he was supposed to be responsible and a leader in this, but he also knew that he couldn't do it all himself—not if he wanted to avoid the sort of mess he'd gotten into during his exams. And everyone was counting on him _not_ to do that.

"Absolutely, buddy," Poe said. "I've already got a list, let me tell you...I mean—" But then he winked and laughed. "Kidding. But you can count on me." Poe was glad to be delegated _to_ for once, as much for Finn as for himself, because Finn delegating meant Finn wasn't going to try to do everything himself.

"Make sure to put in how weird it is that you don't have death matches for food," Deeks teased, and he and Poe pulled faces at each other.

Rey rolled her eyes. "And if there's anything you think of that will make them feel more comfortable...little things. Less food options in the mess for a few days," she said, strongly disliking her own idea. "Or—organizing the weapons lockers?"

"I about had a heart attack when I first saw that, yeah," Deeks agreed, serious for the first time.

Poe laughed. "Oh gods, don't let Gunnery Sergeant Fostoria hear that."

"We had also brought up the idea of a buddy system," Jess said, changing the subject. "Or even a mentor? Is that too demeaning? It's just that Deeks and Finn both had someone..."

"What about if we offered—we could tell them who specifically expressed a desire to help out if they have questions or get lost or just need to shadow someone to understand what they should be doing—"

"I did that a lot with Jess!" Deeks broke in.

"Is _that_ why you are always staring?"

"Well, yeah... No one likes asking stupid questions like how much food they're allowed to take, or why there's so much food, or if it's weird when you accidentally run into the General and she asks if you're running to a fire." He sighed. " _That_ was really confusing..." Jess was laughing, again, because she remembered. Frantic, Deeks had looked around for the fire and started scrambling for some way to put it out when he found it before Leia could explain it was a joke. "I thought she would be mad..." he admitted, and Jess patted his shoulder sympathetically.

"So having other people to buddy up with might be appreciated. And we can tell those who are willing that if the troopers see them kind of uneasy or confused, they might offer to help," Finn said, although he wasn't sure how willing the troopers would be to even accept help. Hopefully it wouldn't be a problem.

Poe nodded. "Yeah, I'll get a Command meeting scheduled to talk about what we can do to help."

"I'll be the guide," Deeks offered.

"I'll get volunteers for mentors," Jess said. "And bully Snap into making a prison run. Not sure how fast we want the POWs out, but I'll run it by the general." 

"Um, I could speak with Dr. Kalonia and Luke and see how we want to handle psych evals," Rey said.

"And I've got paperwork," Connix said.

"Okay, we should head back, then, because I guarantee they've finished showering and dressing already," Deeks piped up.

Finn sighed in relief—they all had everything under control, and he could talk to the General and Dr. Kalonia, and everything would be perfectly fine. He repeated this to himself when they got back to the stormtroopers and they were, every one of them, trying to look like they weren't clutching their clothes to their chests as if afraid someone would try to take them from them.

It was going to be a long...process.

…

“Permission to enter, General?” Finn said, standing at attention in front of Leia’s open door. The stormtroopers had been settled in, and were taken care of for now, and Finn had finally had a moment to himself to think. About the stormtroopers, about the mission, about what a success it was, but also about what had happened to Poe and Rey to get there, and the many ways it could have gone spectacularly wrong.

Finn had thought he could let it go. 

Turned out, he could not.

Leia looked up, almost startling, if she had been a lesser woman. Finn normally knocked, and usually looked a bit more timid than he did now. Through the Force, Leia could sense something was wrong, so she frowned a little and stood up. “Of course. Come in, Finn. Was there...something else?” They had only spoken two hours ago, about the recovered stormtroopers. 

Finn entered, staring at a point just above her head.

Military formal. _Uh-oh_.

“Would...you like to sit down?”

“I would prefer to stand, General.” He tossed his datapad onto her desk so suddenly that she almost flinched. “I am here to resign my rank in the Resistance.”

Leia gaped openly. Of all the possible things she expected Finn to say, that was not even remotely on the list. But she took a moment to gather herself. “Can I ask why?”

Finn took a deep breath. “I have filed my mission report for the capture of the _Vapor_ ,” he said. “And in filing it I came to the conclusion that I cannot serve a command structure that views their people as dispensable enough to put them, without fair warning and in only partial knowledge of their situation, in a position where they are captured and tortured and pitted against Force users well above their abilities. Even for the sake of securing dangerous technology and recovering stormtroopers.”

Leia’s eyes flashed, and she stood, leaning across her desk. “And if there is no alternative? You have _no_ idea how to run a war, Finn.”

Finn leaned in, too, until their noses were almost touching. “No. But I’ve grown up in a war, for my _entire_ life,” he said. “I have grown up knowing I and everyone around me was totally dispensable, that our command staff didn’t care about anything but the First Order and themselves. If you're willing to go down that path, we're fighting this war for nothing. I left the First Order. I’ll leave the Resistance for the same reason.”

Leia dropped her gaze first, actually cowed. _Shit_ , was all she could think. 

After a moment, Finn went on. “It was a bad plan, and you know it. It was reckless and unethical. I expect recklessness and occasional ethical dilemmas from Commander Dameron, or Rey, and that is why they are not in charge and you are. Just because it _worked_ doesn’t make it any less bad or less unethical.”

Leia opened her mouth, and closed it.

 “So this resignation is official. Connix signed off on it." The lieutenant hadn't wanted to, but she'd understood, so she did it. "I do not want to hold a commissioned officer’s rank in this Resistance just because my promotion is convenient to a plan that shouldn't have been approved in the first place. And, if I may speak candidly, General,” he added, without waiting for any approval to do so, "I am personally offended that you thought you had to manipulate me into it." 

"Finn," Leia managed, her voice shaking, whether with fear or conviction she wasn’t exactly sure (or didn’t want to admit to herself). She couldn't lose him. But that was her thinking like a General again. "Please. It's—" She shouldn't have to explain herself to—but she _couldn't lose him_. This, more than anything, had made that clear. "What about the stormtroopers?"

"I'm not _going_  anywhere. My life is here. I'll continue to work with the stormtroopers as a civilian consultant. But I won't be part of a system where I might be asked to risk the lives of my people without their knowledge. If the situation is so bad they might say they might want no part of it, they deserve to know that." He hated this. He hated using himself like a bargaining chip—"do better or I'll quit"—but he couldn't in all good faith let what had happened go without comment, and he couldn't be a part of it happening to anyone else, not when he finally had the power to do something. He wondered if this was what Luke had meant by being the conscience of the Resistance in this matter. If he had, Finn wished someone else would do it.

Leia said nothing.

Finn sighed, trying again. "Do you remember how mad you were at us when we went to Mortis and Rey and Poe nearly died?"

Leia remembered. 'You nearly got our only Jedi Padawan, our only First Order defector, and our best pilot killed! I don't care why you did it!' were her exact words.

"I just want you to remember that before you send people into danger they're not prepared for or don't need to be in," he said softly. It wasn't even that Finn wanted an apology. The General would always be a politician, and he knew better than to assume he was the only person she had ever manipulated. Rey wouldn't want an apology, either, and Finn thought Poe's head might explode if his General apologized to him. Finn just didn't want it to happen again. "You have your own conscience. You really don't need mine," he added.

"I'm sorry," she blurted out, not sure why she _owed him_  an apology. "I didn't do it lightly. Poe is like a son to me. And I keep throwing him at my _actual_  son, who—" But she shook her head, angry. "And you, and Rey... _Force_ , Finn. You're right. It's different when dire situations are thrust upon us. When we have no choice." She deflated back in her chair. "You would have come up with a better plan. If I had told you. I was just so confident..."

"Honestly, except for the part where you sent them in without full knowledge, it was a good plan." He didn't think he could have come up with a better one. But he would have told Poe. "They would have gone anyway, you know. Poe would go to the end of the galaxy to jump down a krayt dragon's throat for you if you gave him a good reason." This was getting awkwardly into territory he didn't know how to navigate with his superior officer, especially when he'd just handed her his resignation and scolded her for making bad decisions. "And, well, me. I would, too. " He smiled a little sadly. There wasn't another person he would have done that for before the Resistance. "But you have to give us the chance."

Leia blinked. "Please don't do this. We need you, Finn. I need you."

"I'll still be here, I already assured you of that—and Connix. But I won't be an officer, not if I have to be complicit in things like this mission," Finn said. "I won't criticize your command decisions, if that's what you're concerned about." He would have to explain to various people what had happened, somehow, but it would be better. Of course, Rey and Poe would know, regardless of anything he told them. He wasn't sure what Poe would think, but he'd worry about it later. Unless...

Here Finn chewed on his lip, seeing a change in her, and, perhaps because he had tasted command for the first time today, he _pitied_ her. 

Finn sighed. "But if you still want me to be one of your officers, I'll come back, on two conditions." And now he was giving his General ultimatums. The day just got better and better... "I need to know we're still the good guys. And...and I'd appreciate if you'd _ask_ me if I'm ready to return to active duty as a commissioned officer, rather than tricking me into it."

Leia wasn't—awed, exactly. She was too old to be awed. But impressed? Hells, yes. She knew Finn had it in him. Was it possible she had needed the thought of fighting this war without him to show her how valuable he was?

"Finn. Will you return to the Resistance? To active duty, and be an officer I can rely on? Someone needs to fight the good fight, and remind us which side we're on when we forget." She stood up again. "Can I count on you for that, Finn?"

 _This_  was the son she had always needed. Poe would do anything for her, and would always be the son she wanted. But Finn wouldn't do _anything_ for her, and that was the kind of son she needed.

"Please," she added. She was surprised she knew how to say the word. Maybe she would always be royalty...

Finn smiled in relief. "Yes ma'am, I will," he responded. Which left the awkward matter of the resignation that was on Leia's desk. "Uh... Should I...?" he asked, nodding to it. Maybe he could talk to Connix and get her to undo her signature, or something...

Leia laughed suddenly, a deep belly-laugh that she hadn't laughed since Han had been alive. This was the Finn she knew: the kitten of a young man who didn't want to be any trouble. She just had to keep herself on the Right side, and she wouldn't have to tangle with the lion ever again.

"I suppose all that paperwork for your resignation and re-enlistment is a fitting punishment for my...oversight," she said wryly. "Any chance you want to change your name to 'Dameron' now so we don't have to do this again in a few months?" She turned to her own computer, clicked around a few things, and then reached to a drawer below her desk.

"Wait—" Finn began as she took away his rank insignia, but she only smiled and replaced it with another.

"If I am going to need you to question me in public, you should be at least a Major," she said, as he stared in shock. "Should also help with running the Stormtrooper Recovery Task Force, and with leading men into combat, and challenging Brance and Ematt, if you need to." She steepled her fingers and waited.

"But—but I..." Finn started, and then stopped, and then started again. "What." That wasn't especially eloquent. "You don't have to," he assured Leia, because he was happy with Lieutenant, he didn't need to be a _Major_... How had they gone from his angry resignation to a promotion so quickly? "Um, I mean—thank you, General."

"Of course I have to," Leia countered. "I would be stupid not to promote the only person who has ever questioned my authority because it was the right thing to do." She winked. "I would be stupid not to promote someone who is more dedicated to what the Resistance is actually supposed to stand for than he is to me or to our chain of command—or even to _winning_. Now, you'll still answer to Major Ematt, he still has seniority with the Infantry, and for Tactics and Intel you'll still answer to Brance. But I'm confident you'll still go over their heads if you need to." She chuckled to herself. "Dismissed, Major. I'm sure you appreciate how much _paperwork_  I have to get to..."


	11. Chapter 11

Jessika stuck her head in the stormtrooper barracks after her hectic afternoon, to make sure none of the ex-troopers had stayed behind when Deeks took them to dinner (with Finn and Rey and Poe) so everyone had at least a temporary buddy...

"Oh, hey," Jess said brightly at the one that was left. "Punch, right? You hungry?"

Punch glanced up when they heard their name, then turned to match a face to the voice, if not a name. They'd learned too many, the past two days, to keep them all straight. The female pilot—one of them, anyway, the one Deeks said watched out for him (though he'd stressed that he didn't need looking out for)—stood in the doorway. "Actually, yes," they answered with what was hopefully a polite smile.

 _Oh no, they're hot_ , Jess found herself thinking.

Jessika's breath caught when Punch looked up, fixing her with a green-eyed stare. How had she not noticed Punch's green eyes before? Jess was a sucker for green eyes.

"Well...I'm heading to grab some food if you'd like to join me," Jess offered, managing to keep it together. She was definitely not going to have the hots for a nonbinary stormtrooper, because:

  1. Jess was a redblooded lesbian who liked girls, thanks
  2. it would be unethical to try to enter into a relationship with someone who was kind of under her purview, if not actual command, and 
  3. Poe would never ever let her hear the end of it, and would want to go on pilot-stormtrooper double dates or something cheesy like that, and there was just no kriffing way. He would get shirts made that said “Team Stormpilot” and make them all _wear_ them.



Jess shook herself from these thoughts and nodded out the door, but Punch was still sitting. Did they need permission or something? "Ah, you can follow me? Unless you don't want to go yet. No pressure. Mess hall is open until 2100, though they start clearing food away at 2030."

"Oh, of course, yes," Punch answered, aware that they'd been waiting, without realizing it, to be told to eat dinner. They stood hurriedly to follow the pilot, sniffing the air curiously at the smell of food. They'd only smelled those sorts of smells coming from the kitchen that served the highest ranking officers. "What's your name?" they asked after walking in silence for maybe thirty seconds, unsure if they were supposed to make conversation or merely wait until they were spoken to to respond.

"Oh!" Jess said. "Sorry. I'm Jessika Pava. Testor is my callsign, but 'Jess' is easier to say so we mostly go with that. I'm the Captain of Blue Squadron," she explained, wondering if Punch would appreciate the explanation or find it overwhelming. Punch was taller than Jess, and had really nice thick hair that was cropped short but might be curly if it grew a bit longer. It was shiny and black, like hers, so they would match—no. _No. Stop this, Testor, you have been single for too long._

"So do they call you 'Punch' for, like, obvious reasons, or...?" she said, trying to be conversational as they neared the mess hall.

"More or less. My call sign is PN-7777," they answered, and then repeated Jess's name several times, trying out the different inflections and sounds in the name. It had a certain rhythm to it that Punch liked, but it was probably weird to say it more than a few times to remember it, so they stopped. "Thank you for shepherding us, Jessica Pava," they told her, "And for watching out for DK—Deeks?—all this time. I thought we'd long since had him for dinner!" It was meant as a joke, but Punch realized maybe that wasn't funny here. "Uhh—I mean...I was joking. We don't eat other troopers." But they couldn't resist the opportunity: "Well, that _we_ know of..."

Jessika almost choked on a cry that she tried to turn into nervous laughter. "Oh gods, really?" she wondered, and tried to stop thinking about it. She was already having enough trouble reining herself in from jumping in her X-Wing and flying up Captain Phasma's asshole for what the First Order had done to these poor troopers, so she didn't need another reason to hate the First Order. She uncurled her fists and laughed a little more lightly, since she suspected Punch was joking. "Uh, but it's no trouble, seriously." ( _'Shepherding'? Is that a stormtrooper word or is this one just that adorable?!_ ) "I mean, any time I can take somebody to dinner rather than be shot at by them, you know, it's a good day. And Deeks...he's a good kid. Only don't tell him I called him a kid. How early do they start you guys, anyway?—never mind, I'm not sure I want to know."

They arrived in the mess hall, which was bustling with people eating, but the line was short. She spotted the row of straight-backed, fatigue-clad stormtroopers joined by Deeks, Poe, Finn, and Rey, and she waved and saw them make space.

"Okay, so. Let me know if I'm coddling you or if you need help," Jess said, steeling herself. Deeks had practically blown a gasket when he'd seen the amount and variety of food laid out, and Jess had seen how Finn and Rey had only barely handled it at first, too. Who knew how many ways there were to freak out about having access to too much food for the first time in your life? And, actually, now that she was up close, someone must have said something to the catering staff, because there was much less choice than usual—which was both a disappointment (for her) and a relief (for Punch's sake).

"Okay! So. Follow me, but you don't have to do it exactly like me if you want more of something or less of something, or something different. Um. No one monitors how much we eat," she added, knowing that much from Finn and Deeks (apparently they _weighed_ stormtroopers _daily_ to make sure they weren't eating too little or too much!). "We can eat as much or as little as we want, as long as we keep ourselves relatively healthy. Okay?" she added, half a 'got it?' and half 'are you okay?'

Punch stared at the food and raised their eyebrows at Jess. "Okay," they said and sniffed the air again. "Okay. But...Anything? I can pick anything at all?" they asked, more excited than anything else. It was just like Rey and Finn had said—there were so many different kinds of food, and so much of it, and no one stopping anyone from eating as much as they wanted. "Can I try everything?" they asked, positively giddy.

Jess smiled, though she tried to avoid laughing outright. "Yeah, for sure. I mean, the way this is laid out, it's like, vegetarian or chicken, but no reason you can't try both. Maybe start with a little bit of everything, to see what you like. You can come back for more." Jess looked down the line of food, and then up at Punch. "You know what? I'll do that, too. A little bit of everything. Do you want me to describe everything or would that be weird?" Jess said, scooping a bit of each selection onto her plate, even though some things didn't exactly go together.

"That would probably not be weird," Punch said, already spooning small amounts of everything onto their plate in an orderly fashion, doing their best not to mix things together even though it happened anyway. The only things they didn't take some of were what Jessika pointed out as "dessert," because apparently you come back for that, and it was going to need a plate all its own.

"Is there always this much?" Punch asked in disbelief, noting that their plate was piled with a lot more food than they'd expected to have just by taking small spoonfuls of everything.

Jess described each dish as Punch spooned it out, and after getting drinks—a taste of each juice and tea and milk ("You've never had blue milk?!" Jess couldn't help but say)—they headed to the table.

There appeared to be a variety of responses to real food: Tova seemed fairly normal, but Nova, her brother, had three trays and looked unhappily glutted. Timons seemed to be just eating, so perhaps she had needed a minute (like Deeks had fled the mess hall the first time, and Jess had found him in the middle of a panic attack before he returned and ate _five_ trays worth of food). "Hi, gang, how we doing?" Jess asked, sitting across from Rey and patting the place next to her for Punch to join.

"Mostly finishing up," Rey said.

"You are literally always done before anyone else at the table. Including the ex-stormtroopers, so what else is new?" Poe replied. "How's it going, Punch?"

"There's…so much food here. It's weird. Good, but weird," Punch answered.

In the end, they were quite happy to eat their whole plate by alternating bites of things. "Except this. This is not good," they said after tasting a small round vegetable with many leaves. "Sure beats rations, though, even if it does bounce," they added as Tova tried to eat one and sent it pinging across the table.

The table laughed at the bouncing Brussel sprout, but when the maintenance droid came by to yell at them, Rey popped the evidence into her mouth and ate it.

"Okay, maybe we can't do _anything_ ," Jess corrected as they settled down. "And, um, bit late now, but we don't have to finish eating until like, eight, so no need to rush." Punch was cleaning her plate while Jess was still working on the first third of her meal. "But you can go back for dessert any time. The sweet stuff. Don’t need to wait for me."

"Which ones are the best?" Punch asked, because they'd eaten more than they'd intended—it had just been so good—and they were almost too full for dessert.

Almost.

"I'll show you! There's this cake that's made with chocolate, and I think I saw fruit with cream, and there was definitely pie," Deeks said brightly, hopping up and showing Punch and Tova where the desserts were. Punch took enough for the others at the table as well, and carried it all back on several plates with the help of their fellow ex-troopers.

"Hey, Timons—you doing alright?" Punch asked when they sat back down, because Timons was still sitting quietly and eating with a sort of mechanical detachment. But she looked up at Punch and managed a smile. "It's a lot," Punch said, agreeing with the unspoken sentiment, and slid across a small piece of plain vanilla cake.

 _Oh, gods, why?_ Jess barely avoided moaning out loud. Why does Punch have to be so sweet looking out for the other troopers? Wasn't Timons some kind of officer? And now Punch is looking after _her_?

Jess shook herself, and smiled, and shared a glance with Poe, who looked like he too had been trying to figure out how to help Timons and was now deeply relieved.

"Uh, and it’s okay if you don't finish everything," Poe added hastily. "You can take it back to your bunk and eat it later, if you want. Or if you don’t like it, I mean we try not to waste, but don’t force yourself to eat anything you don’t want to eat."

But this seemed to be a bombshell, too, and Jessika interrupted with something more mundane: "Um, I like the chocolate the best. You saved some for me, right?" she asked, trying to avoid making a big deal out of the troopers' eating habits. Punch nudged her slightly as they sat down, but then slid immediately away. She missed the touch.

"I think we took the last of it, but I'll share," Punch said, and then grinned. "But on one condition—tell me where I can find a gym?" they asked. Across the table, Timons seemed to brighten a little further, and even Tova and Nova sat up to pay attention.

"Ohh, no fair," Jess said, trying to laugh about it but eyeing the chocolate cake darkly.

"I'll show you where the gym is!" Deeks offered.

"No, you don't, squirt. Not if there's cake on the line," Jess said, and then her smile brightened, looking up for the first time. "I’ll show them. We have a few gyms, and as long as there's no classes or training obviously going on in them, they're free to use any time," Jess said. "We can show you after dinner if you like."

"I think we all should go," Punch said, and knew it had been the right decision when the others managed at least small looks of relief. Gyms could reasonably be expected to be similar everywhere, and if they could take comfort in nothing else familiar, they would all be at home throwing each other around a mat or sparring with practice weapons.

"Absolutely," Jess said, and grinned as Punch slid the cake over to her, but she dutifully only ate half. Punch was kind of undainty with food, which Jess found adorable instead of disgusting like when Snap did it. When they finished, Jess showed Punch where to take their tray and dishes, and Deeks stood beside her, trying to look important.

Of course, you say "gym" and Poe Dameron runs for the hills, so Rey, Finn, and Poe had disappeared.

But somehow, Jess didn't mind babysitting duty today.

"Okay, everyone ready? You can grab a pouch of water here if you think you'll need it."

If Punch was excited to see the gym, Tova and Nova were practically giddy, even though both had, in the end, eaten way too much to do anything. Deeks was chattering on excitedly to them and kept taking his eyes off where he was going, until he nearly ran into a post. Jess grabbed his collar just in time and pulled him back a step so he'd miss it, and Punch smiled.

"How did you get the job of shepherding ex-Stormtroopers?" they asked Jess when Deeks, Tova, and Nova were out of earshot.

Jess chuckled softly. "I'm not sure I have an answer to that that isn't sarcastic," she said, and then thought about it seriously. "I just—I mean. I care? Is that enough of an answer? I...it feels, sometimes, often, that I'm helping more against the First Order this way. I've always seen their atrocities, and I've always responded with more violence. But then there's...what happened to you, and Deeks, and Finn, and that's—not an atrocity, exactly, but, well." Jess had slowed, focused on the answer. "It's something I can help fix without violence, and that feels good sometimes." Now Jess flashed her a wry grin. "Which isn't to say I'm _against_ an aggressive application of blaster cannons to the right kind of problem. I grew up fighting—maybe not like you, but—I’m not afraid of it." She huffed. "Sorry, wow, that was probably way more intense and introspective than you probably care about. Short answer: I volunteered. Come on, let's catch up with the others," she said, quickening her pace and for some childish reason was afraid to look Punch in the eye. "Are you actually going to want to work out right now? I mean we just ate..." she asked, to change the subject.

"I _was_ the one who asked," Punch said, ignoring her attempt to deflect, and offered Jess a small smile. "You're speaking to someone whose sole distinguishing characteristic according to the First Order was their ability to hit things—I didn't want to be that person forever." As soon as it was clear, from Finn's example, that there were other options, Punch had more or less decided. They hadn't necessarily expected to find welcome, or people who cared enough that they offered to help ex-Stormtroopers find their way.

"Yeah, well, what do they know, huh?" Jess said encouragingly, and managed to look up and grant Punch a smile. "Oh, wait, you mean your name?" Jess said, and stopped in the hallway now to face them. "Do you not like being called Punch?" For an instant it was absurd: why would someone allow themselves to be _named_ something that they didn't like? But Jessika very quickly reminded herself that she was dealing with someone kidnapped at birth and trained to do one thing. Her heart ached. "We can call you something else, if that's—not a nickname you like. Deeks chose his name for himself, I think they called him something else in the Order. And Finn, well—Poe gave him that name, so the story goes, but Finn chose to take it."

"I don't care for the nickname, but it was better than going by a number," Punch said. It hadn't occurred to them that changing it was an option, even though they knew the others, except Timons, had not always gone by the names they now used. But their designations had been easy to turn into names—TV-4571 and NV-4064, for example. PN-7777 did not lend itself well to being a name, besides Punch. "I could think about it, I guess. It would be nice to go by something other than Punch," they admitted.

"Yeah, for sure. Let us know. You know, believe it or not, but I knew a girl in school who was named 'Seven.' Like that was her actual name. I think her parents thought it was trendy or something...and maybe it is. And you've got so many sevens in your designation. Though I guess that's like Finn not liking the name 'Eight-Seven,' so." She shrugged. "It's _your_ name, so you get to dictate what people call you." She smiled again. "Sorry, we should catch up with the others!"

Punch nodded on ahead and, when they caught up with the others, was still deep in thought. Sevens was certainly better than Punch, even if it did reference her designation. But then, most of the names seemed to, even if it was usually the first part, and not the second. "Can I change my name later if I don't like it after all?" they asked.

"Yeah!" Jessika said brightly. "I mean, at some point we'll get you New Republic ID cards, and once it's official it's a bit harder to change names, but not impossible. If it's just a matter of what we call you, you can do that any time." She held the door open for the stormtrooper, leading her into the large gym where the others were. "You might not want to change it too often, so you don't confuse people, though," she laughed. “But we’ll do our best.”

The other stormtroopers seemed just to enjoy being in a gym, and were standing and talking with Deeks when Jess and Punch entered. "Thanks, Punch," Timons said a little shyly once they'd joined the group, and Punch smiled at her.

"Call me Sevens—and you're welcome, but thank Jess, because I would have gotten us lost if I tried to find it myself," they said, smiling over at the pilot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief foray away from Jedistormpilot to...more...stormpilot? What is it with pilots and stormtroopers, anyway? ;) #pleaseloveourOCs 
> 
> Now back to your regularly scheduled Jedistormpilot...


	12. Chapter 12

For the most part, the stormtroopers integrated well, if slowly. The base was back on normal rations quickly, and there were no incidents in the mess hall. The Resistance members tried to be helpful at every opportunity.

But it was a lot of work, and they didn't always have good days.

"Finn! Finn, come quick!" Rey cried, bursting into where he was having an Intelligence meeting with Timons, Brance, and the General, (no one asked how she got in, which was probably good). "It's Tova and Nova, they're in the hangar and neither one is in a good mood, I'm not sure—what—you should come."

Rey solved things best with her hands, her lightsaber, or the Force, in that order, and nowhere on that list were "interpersonal skills" involved.

That was what she had her fiancés for.

When they reached the hangar, Poe was in the middle of trying to talk Chewie down from ripping Nova's arm off, and Bastian was reaching for Tova's arm, saying, "Look, I think we should take a walk..."

And they arrived just in time to see Tova turn around and sock Bastian in the nose.

Finn was across the hangar before things could escalate further. Bastian, maker bless his tolerant soul, was glaring at Tova fit to kill, but had not yet thrown a retaliatory punch. Finn got between them and turned first to Bastian. "Is it broken?" he asked, and Bastian shook his head. Then he turned to Tova, who looked some combination of furious and terrified. Poe was still talking to Chewie, and Nova was frozen. "Tova, go with Bastian to medical. Tell Dr. Kalonia why his nose is bleeding and that I've assigned you to help in medical under her supervision for the next week," he told Tova, and when he didn't hear any confirmation that she'd heard him, he turned back to her. "Was that unclear, or do I have to make it two weeks?" he asked.

“Sir,” she said, and turned to Bastian, nodding grumpily for him to lead the way.

Finn turned to Poe and Chewie, but didn't interrupt for fear of making matters worse.

"Chewie, he just doesn’t have the background—" Poe tried, holding his hands up and stubbornly keeping himself between Nova and the wookiee. "I _know_ it's kriffing racist, we're dealing with it!"

[I wasn't enslaved by the Empire to take this shit from a First Order buckethead!]

"Chewie, buddy, I know, but tearing his arms off won't solve anything!"

[…Make me feel better!]

Out of the corner of his eye, Poe saw Bastian heading off with Nova, and he desperately wanted to go with them,unsure how well that was going to work, and wanting to check on his pilot…

At Poe's comment, Finn realized a little of what had happened. "Um—Chewie—"

[WHAT] Chewie roared at him, and Finn flinched. He knew that word, at least.

"Chewie, I'm sorry. I'll make sure I talk to all of them about the stupid things the First Order teaches about other races, but—" he wasn't sure what else to say that didn't sound merely conciliatory. "I'm sorry," he added again, because he was ultimately responsible for the stormtroopers, and it hadn't occurred to him that they would have the same racist tendencies as the rest of the First Order—as he’d had, in the beginning, too. "You remember how bad I was at first, right?"

[Yeah. I would have ripped your arm off, too, if I hadn't just been shot] Chewie said, and Rey and Poe didn't bother to translate. 

Finn looked pained, and then: "Wait, look, hey, you know what really made an impression on me? Your holochess table. Obviously other things need to happen—and they will, and you can help or not as you see fit—but chess. You could totally kick his ass at chess, which might also make you feel better?" Finn suggested, then realized this might sound like he was trying to make Chewie prove something, and he got flustered. "Not that you have to! You don't have to do anything except not take his arms off. But—I know you like chess, and I thought maybe if you wanted to... You know, nevermind, forget I said anything, I'm—" he was cut off as Chewie, who'd been listening pensively, clasped his shoulder with one giant furry hand.

[Yes] he said, and added slowly and clearly for Finn's benefit (he was improving, but conversational Wookiee was still far beyond him). [I will play chess with Nova]. After a moment parsing the sentence, Finn grinned brightly.

Poe laughed, suddenly, and turned a smile on Nova. It was going to be hard for the stormtrooper to think of Chewie as a 'thing' if he wiped the floor with him in a game of chess—a game of _wits._  "Okay, buddy, you're going to, ah, learn first hand why it's a bad idea to refer to a Wookiee as a ‘thing’ instead of a person. You know how to play chess?"

"I, ahh—" Nova stammered, looking both relieved and concerned. "Yes?"

"Any good?" 

Nova squared his shoulders. "Never been beaten, sir."

 _"Excellent._  We're gonna let Chewie kick your ass intellectually, which will hurt less than getting your arms ripped off, so..." Poe smiled gratefully at Finn, for it had been a good idea, and Chewie led the way inside the _Falcon_. Nova followed.

Poe and Rey convened on Finn.

"Thanks for that, buddy," Poe whispered, giving Finn a secret smile. Rey looked up at him with something like awe. "I'm gonna go check on Bastian. You want to keep an eye on things here? Hey, wait, weren't you in a meeting?"

"Why were they so _mad_?" Rey whispered. She wasn't good at people, but she could read body language. They were both of them angry _before_ things escalated.

"I'll make sure Bastian didn't say anything to upset them," Poe offered, “though he should know better..."

"I'll try to find out, but maybe try to find out from Tova, too?" Finn asked Poe before he could leave. He pulled him close and kissed his hair, and then gave him a quick peck on the lips. "Rey, could you stay here? I still can't understand Chewie when he talks too fast," he admitted.

"You're learning Wookiee?"

"Working on it. I feel bad not being able to understand Chewie...and he said he'd teach me." Trouble was, it was getting mixed up with Sullustan from trying to learn from Nien Nunb, and the smattering of Yavinese he was learning from conversations with Kes.

Rey, happy or proud or both, threw her arms around his neck and took his hand before following after Chewie and Nova.

"What were they doing before all of this? Like this morning. Were they in the gym or something?" Finn asked.

Rey shrugged. "No, they were here. Doing repairs on Bastian's X-Wing. Shields, I think?" They followed Chewie and Nova into the ship and sat on the bench. Finn sat beside Nova while Rey sat beside Chewie, and they began the game.

Nova was very familiar with the game, but not, as it turned out, as good as he thought, and soon grew frustrated.

Finn watched Nova becoming frustrated for awhile before Chewie put a stop to it with a check mate. Once it was clear which way the game was going to go, Chewie sat back from the chess set and crossed his arms, looking smug. [Pretty good for a non-sentient, right?] he said, but luckily only Rey understood that.

Just as steam seemed about to come out Nova's ears, Finn stepped forward. "Nova—walk with me," he said, and turned to leave the ship while Nova scrambled to his feet to follow him. At the bulkhead, Finn heard Nova's footsteps stop.

"I am sorry, Chewbacca," the ex-stormtrooper said, earnest at least even if it bordered on grumbling. Apologies...just another thing to work on.

"Let's go," Finn said. 

Rey stayed behind with Chewie for damage control. "He's just—"

[Young and foolish, I know. I forget that about humans.] Chewie laughed to himself. [You should have heard the things _Han_ would say when we first met.]

Rey smiled. "Tell me?"

[Let’s just say he was lucky I owed him a Life Debt…]

…

Nova was walking with Finn, but he didn't like it. "Is Tova going to be punished?"

"Disciplined, yes. But not in the way you're thinking, even if she did punch someone in the nose. Not that you'll always get such allowances, but we're aware it's an adjustment." Finn wasn't walking anywhere specific, though he supposed it was the general direction of medical. "She'll be helping Dr. Kalonia in medical for a week." At this, Nova paused, and had to go a few steps to catch up.

"That's…all?" he asked, and Finn wanted to cry.

"Yeah, Nova. That's all." They walked in silence for several more moments before Finn spoke again.

"When I first got here I had panic attacks when I thought I was in a vulnerable place or when things were out of my control. And then I would get frustrated and angry with myself and the whole world because I didn't want to be afraid, and it was easier to be angry than to be afraid," he told Nova, hoping this olive branch, such as it was, would help ferret or what had bothered the troopers in the first place.

"Yeah," Nova said, remembering Dr. Kalonia's suggestion to communicate, and feeling confident he could do so with Finn. Maybe. He still outranked him, and that meant he was dangerous. He knew better than to get too buddy-buddy with Finn, though part of him wanted to. "I was angry. And it wasn't Chewbacca's fault." He paused, wanting to say more, but not sure where to begin. "Will I be punished? For insulting an officer, or, or for being so kriffing bad at chess?" He tried to laugh off his last suggestion, fairly confident that the Resistance wasn't like that, though he knew Finn knew the First Order was.

...

"Bastian, how you doing, man?" Poe said, not addressing the trooper who was now being instructed how to wash her hands to surgery-scrub perfection so she could learn to use the equipment.

Bastian had his head tilted back, gauze and ice pressed to his nose. He grinned as he saw Poe enter. "Fine once the bleeding stops. I'd, ah, kinda like to know what I did?" he added, lowering his voice.

Poe frowned and nodded. "I'm pretty confident it wasn't you, man. Can you tell me what happened?"

Bastian lowered the gauze and sniffed. "Yeah, we were just doing a systems upgrade, amplifying the shields like on the T-85s...and then Chewie walks by and Nova said something loud and, ah, not really appropriate..."

Poe winced. "Yeah, I heard." Something like 'And yet they let that thing pilot a starship.' He turned to Tova. "And can I ask what that had to do with you punching my pilot?" he asked her, his voice harder than he meant it to be, but he was protective of his pilots, and Tova and Nova might one day be that, but they weren't yet. "Or was it something the lieutenant did or said?"

"I grabbed your arm, I'm sorry, I only meant to help," Bastian said, truly wanting to understand. "I thought it'd be better if we avoided the situation..."

"We were expected to fight, if challenged off duty," Tova mumbled, but she was looking at her feet. She remembered the advice Deeks had given her, to explain how things worked in the Order if they were having trouble understanding what you mean.

Poe and Bastian looked at each other, feeling helpless. "And, ah, grabbing your arm was a challenge?" It was like learning an alien culture.

"No, not exactly..."

Poe looked up as Finn and Nova entered the room, relief was awash on Poe's face. He prided himself at reading people and knowing how to deal with them, but these stormtroopers continually threw him off.

"Finn!" he cried. "Ah, so how did the game go? We're just trying to figure out what went wrong so we don't have a repeat here..." he said amicably, though in his eyes he was crying out for Finn to rescue him.

Tova went back to washing her hands, glowering. If Poe didn't know any better, she looked _mad_ —but he was seriously doubting he knew anything about how these people processed or exhibited emotions.

"We know what Nova said and we know you were already mad before he said it—but why were you angry? Did something happen?" Finn asked, but Tova was still sulking and Nova had apparently used up his quota of conversation on the way to medical. Finn sighed. "Okay, both of you look at me." When he had their attention, he smiled ruefully. "I know talking isn't really something we do, but humor me before I have to go all C.O. on you. What made you so angry?" he asked, and waited patiently for one of them to speak, the silence in the room broken only occasionally by Bastian, who was still sniffling.

"We hate the pilots here," Tova finally said.

Poe and Bastian both blinked.

"Um...Okay, I'm sorry to hear that," Poe tried diplomatically. "Was it something we—"

"No!" Nova finally shouted, and Dr. Kalonia startled from her desk. "It's—you all—we hate _all_ Resistance and New Republic pilots."

"TIE fighters don't have shields," Tova said bitterly.

That was kind of a non sequitur, and took a moment to make sense, but when it did—

" _Oh my gods_ ," Bastian whispered.

"We just—it’s not kriffing fair!" Nova cried, tears stinging his eyes. "They told us if we get hit then we're not good enough to pilot for the Order, and that the Republic and Resistance starfighter pilots are weak because of this. And—and they hate anyone who's not human but even the Wookiee—even _Chewie_ has shields, and—"

"And Bastian was making his shields _stronger_!" Tova complained. "We don't even have them at all and—" she sniffled. "Didn't have them," she said, going quiet and scrubbing a hand over her face. "It's not fair. I hate it here."

Finn had a sneaking suspicion that Tova and Nova didn't actually hate it here, so much as they hated that everyone they'd ever known was still _there_. And he knew the feeling all too well. "A wise doctor told me about survivor guilt, awhile back. It's where you feel guilty because you're here and they're not, usually because you've survived something someone else didn't."

Both stormtroopers were looking at him, still miserable, but they were listening.

Finn continued. "And I guess there's defectors' guilt. You feel bad you left them, right?" he asked, and got two grudging nods. "And if being here makes it worse, you know you're free to leave, and no one will fault you. But one of the reasons we fight the First Order is that they think of people as disposable. So you're welcome to stay, and we need all the help we can get... But you have to use that anger for something other than in-fighting. You can never, ever react violently towards another member of the Resistance again. But in exchange we'll never, ever send you out without shields or treat you like tools to be replaced." He was doing his best not to let a hint of anger enter his voice, but he wasn't sure if he succeeded. This, too, would probably need talking out. But not right now, when Tova and Nova were still upset.

Dr. Kalonia smiled, nodding secretly at Finn as the former First Order pilots nodded.

"…Sorry I hit you, Lieutenant Bastian," Tova said.

Bastian managed a smile for her. "It's okay," he said. "Any time we want to do repairs together again is fine."

Poe beamed and clapped Bastian on the shoulder. "Hey, there's that new Y-Wing salvage we recently picked up, you know," he said. "And if it's all right with Major Finn, after you make it up to him for, ah, what happened today, I don't see why we couldn't start working on getting that one running. Two-seater."

Bastian laughed, eyes sparkling. "Yeah, baby! And if you want to see _shields_!" he cackled. It might just blow their minds. 

"So you'll continue to help them, Bash? It's either that or make Rey work with them, and she takes significantly less shit than you do..." Poe teased.

Tova and Nova looked terrified as Bastian pretended to consider this and laughed. "Sure. I think I can give them more chance."

"Absolutely—after Tova is done with her rotation here and Nova has made it up to Chewie," Finn said, relieved this hadn't been the disaster it has threatened to be. He still owed Chewie—he should have _prevented_ the problem, rather than having to respond to it after the fact—but he'd handle that on his own later, and make sure Chewie was alright with how he'd handled the situation.

"I'd like a meeting, too," Dr. Kalonia said, "to talk a bit more about this. And I have a few holos on racial and cultural sensitivity," she offered.

“Might as well make them sit through the entire H.R. training,” Poe said with a chuckle, and Bastian groaned. The series was notoriously cheesy, but then basic things like How To Not Sexually Harass Your Coworkers and How To Not Racially Discriminate In The Workplace and Basic Human Decency were probably not covered well by the First Order's H.R.

Tova and Nova nodded.

"Would you prefer to work together?" Dr. Kalonia checked. They nodded again. "You could both do medical rotations with me, then, and both work on interracial sensitivity."

"And work on not punching your fellow pilots," Bastian teased. "Seriously, you guys had to fight to the death over shit like that?"

"Only if we wanted promotions," Nova said.

"Why do you think Eight-Seven was still a private in the First Order?" Tova said, smiling shyly at Finn.

Finn answered Tova's smile with one of his own. "Could you see that Timons and Sevens get the same cultural and racial sensitivity information as these two?" Finn asked the doctor. "I can help," he offered.

"Sure. Let's talk at dinner, and we'll coordinate," Dr. Kalonia answered. She turned to Tova and Nova and herded them off to show them what they would be helping her with. Finn blew out a sigh once they were gone.

"Sorry again, Bash. You're sure you're alright?" he asked.

Bastian waved Finn off. "Yeah, I'm cool," he said. “I think I dodged the brunt of it, or she pulled her punch.” After the medidroid looked him over, the three made their way out.

"Finn, buddy, you're amazing," Poe said, when they were alone. "I thought we were gonna be shipping them off..." He shook his head and squeezed Finn's shoulder, leaning in to kiss him briefly. "Thanks. Can I walk you back to your meeting?"

"Pretty sure it'll already be over, but now I have three more meetings to get to…you can walk me there to check," Finn said. He put an arm around Poe's waist and pulled him close where he could kiss his cheek and just rest his forehead against his shoulder for a minute. There was so much to do... But first he had a meeting to check on, so he eventually stopped leaning on Poe and yawned. "Ok. I'm good. Let's go check on that meeting," he said.


	13. Chapter 13

"Why is Finn so hot?" Poe whined. "And smart and kind and, Force. He’s so good to these people, even when they don’t deserve it."

Rey smiled softly in agreement. "Finn does make you feel personally victimized by his wonderfulness, doesn't he?" The first time he had smiled at her she felt her heart stop, and having his focus was still dizzying.

They were lounging on their bed, heads touching and arms reaching up to pet each others' hair, waiting for Finn to get out of his meeting(s) (which, because of the afternoon's interruption, had continued after dinner).

"And the way he gives orders makes me swoon, _seriously_ ," Poe said. "When his voice gets all serious."

Rey sat up and giggled, looking over her shoulder down at Poe. "You really are into that, aren't you?"

Poe cut his eyes at her. "If you keep teasing me, I may not be," he grumbled.

Rey rolled over. "For someone who says he likes pain with sex, don’t you think you're being a _little_ sensitive?" she teased, and kissed his forehead. "Anyway, I've been reading some books from Karé and Iolo, and the more I learn and think about it the more I think it'll be fun!" The books had said it had to be taken seriously in order to stay safe, but Rey couldn't deny that she got...feelings when she read about the role of the “Top” in these scenarios. "I like being in control, and I…kinda like the idea of chaining you _both_ to the bed, honestly."

"Really?" Poe asked with a relieved grin. 

"Uhhh...what now?" Finn asked as he appeared at the door, set his things down, and walked to the bed, not even stopping to remove his shoes.

“Finn!” they cried, but Finn fell face-down on the bed, leaving his feet hanging off, and groaned loudly.

"Why are we chaining people to beds?" he asked.

Poe laughed as Rey blushed, but they both were prepared to coo over their exhausted fiancé. "Never mind that," Rey said. "How were your meetings? And what did Dr. Kalonia say?"

"—That isn't protected under patient confidentiality," Poe added, pulling Finn into his lap so he could scrub his hair and Rey could scratch his arms.

"The meeting was fine. I had to explain to the General what had happened with Tova and Nova." She hadn't been pleased, but she'd trusted him to handle it and let it go this once. "Kalonia says we should talk to Chewie in case he wants to help, or if there's something else he wants out of this, but otherwise she'll do most of the training and I'll make sure they understand and are doing alright, since they'll be more likely talk to me than to her." He hummed as Rey scratched at his arms and Poe scrubbed his hands over his hair. "It's not going to be as straightforward as I'd hoped. I just want to do right by them, but I also want to make sure they aren’t awful to everyone here," he said tiredly. "Maybe I should have seriously resigned."

Poe and Rey both sat up. "Resigned?" Poe cried, a bit louder than he meant to, a smile playing on his lips, because surely Finn was just joking. "You're thinking about resigning?" Poe could feel his stomach churning in worry, even if it was just a joke.

"But Finn, the Resistance needs you," Rey added. What would they do without him? So many people relied on him!

"I'm not resigning—but I did try to. I had a good reason!" he said, because admitting that he'd tried only made Poe and Rey more concerned, and they stopped petting him. He frowned and sat up a little. "I wasn't about to serve a Resistance that was willing to treat its people as chess pieces and put them in dangerous situations without their knowledge." He played with a loose thread on the blanket they were sitting on. "The General promoted me instead."

"You said that to _Leia_?!" Poe cried, voice cracking. He knew Finn was brave, but he would never, ever have put him in the foolhardy-brave category, or the stupid-brave category. "A-and she _—promoted_  you?" Clear through Captain, which Poe wasn't sure was possible anywhere except the Resistance, which wasn't a formal military. Poe's brain shorted out as he tried to imagine that showdown: Finn, out-righteousing his childhood hero, and his childhood hero not only permitting this insubordination but rewarding it. "Fuck me flying," he muttered. 

And Poe wondered, distantly, if this was what having a stroke felt like. He was _proud_  of Finn, but, holy shit, could it still be considered pride if Finn had faced down a god and was now numbered among the divine as well? Poe felt as though Finn outranked him, now, like, far outranked him, and it had nothing to do with military hierarchy.

Rey only gaped. She knew Finn was a warrior, had the capacity to stand up to anything, but he just _didn't_  so often, because he was gentle and kind and loving and preferred conversation and compromise to fighting, so it was easy to forget. Just thinking of him challenging Leia—who scared Rey on a good day—and on a plan Rey had helped her come up with, no less—awed her more than meeting Skywalker for the first time had.

In the stretching silence, Poe's brain decided suddenly to focus on something easier, something small and selfish and manageable: "Wait. You did that for _us_?" He wasn't sure why his voice was pitched so high, but he couldn't get it back down.

Finn smiled sheepishly at that. "I'm not sure I'm brave enough to have done it for anyone else. Not...like that, anyway." He might have made his opinion known, but he wouldn't have threatened resignation. "I didn't _just_  do it for you two. But I did do it because of you," he said.

Poe and Rey needed a few more minutes just to stare at him.

"Thanks," Poe said, after several seconds, which was wholly inadequate.

"But, but," Rey stammered, after several more seconds. "You didn't resign. You threatened to, and she promoted you instead?"

"Go slow, please," Poe whimpered. "Start over?" They were staring at him almost warily, like he would suddenly manifest dangerous superpowers—beyond the imagination even of the Jedi-in-training.

"Okay—stop looking at me like that and I'll explain. Seriously, stop, it makes me nervous," he said, especially to Poe, but Rey looked a little self-conscious and stopped staring like he'd grown another head or something. "I told the General that the First Order treats their people as disposable, and if the Resistance was going to start down that path, and start sending people into dangerous situations without bothering to tell them the full risk, this war isn't worth fighting. And it's not." He looked between Poe and Rey and reached for their hands. He hadn't really expected them to react quite so strongly to him threatening to resign.

Poe glanced at Rey, knowing it was part her plan, too. "I mean, I would have done it," he said, wanting to defend Leia, though of course Finn was right. "It's not like she forced me into it. They just didn't tell me the specifics because Kylo Ren can mind-fuck me into telling him, and then he would have known about our backup..."

"Poe, you didn't even know the idea was for you to get _captured_  when you left!" Finn said, aggrieved. "You should have _known_  that. There was no reason for her not to tell you at least that much." And yes, Rey had known, but it was Poe who had been in the most danger from getting captured, even though he was more than capable of defending himself under ordinary circumstances.

"Well, I had guessed...." Poe said, which meant that, yeah, okay, he could have been told that, and even worst case scenario it wouldn't have made a difference. He shook his head. "Okay, well. I still would have..."

"I know you would have, but it would have been _your_  choice. You shouldn't have been tricked into it. I shouldn't have been tricked into a promotion that first time, either," Finn said unhappily.

Poe nodded. That part had bothered him, though he hadn't as yet stood up to Leia on Finn's behalf. Now it looked like he didn't have to. "Yeah. Yeah, okay," he said, feeling like he had been just taught a moral lesson from an ex-stormtrooper.

"It's like the Dark Side," Rey said, looking dejected. "You start down a path, and..." She blinked up at them. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry to you both. I helped come up with the plan, and I thought—and—I just wanted to face Kylo Ren so badly!" She clenched her fists until Poe and Finn each took hold of one.

"Hey, sweetheart. It's okay. No one's going darkside here." Poe kissed her knuckles, prying her fist gently open. "I forgive you. There's nothing to forgive, but if you want it, you have it." He chuckled. "I'd have gone with much dumber plans to let you get a chance at him."

"And I forgive you too," Finn said, "though that wasn't supposed to be what this was about. It's okay. " He pulled both Rey and Poe into a hug, and held them in silence for many minutes. "Anyway, so that's how I tried to resign and got promoted. Story time over!" he laughed. "Now how about you tell me about your days, because I'm tired of thinking about mine and need a break."

"I had a good talk with Chewie after...the incident today," Rey said, glad that was over with. "He feels sorry for them more than he's mad."

"Bastian and I finished amping his shields," Poe said. "And then me and Rey met up for dinner. And then we were bored waiting for you. You got enough to eat, right? You want to sleep or go for a run or a walk or something?"

"Yeah, there was still plenty of food left by the time Dr. K and I met up, so I ate." Finn stretched and leaned back against Poe's chest. "I'm happy staying in, if you are. I'm afraid someone will find another catastrophe for me to deal with if I leave this room again." Rey squirmed down toward his feet.

"Okay, but, shoes on the bed—you two, I swear," she said, wrestling with Finn's boots until she'd tossed them on the floor. He smiled at her and wiggled his toes.

"Says the woman who ruined a perfectly good set of sheets with grease stains," he told her.

"I was _ill and dying_!"

"The first time! What's your excuse for the second?" Finn laughed, and Rey snorted.

"Are we _sure_ we missed him today?" she asked Poe, grinning.

"Pretty positive," Poe hummed, and kissed his cheeks. "Anyway, I can think of one or two ways to unwind after our very stressful day..." he said, and blushed as he dared to suggest: "Uhh, like maybe you can let me try to make you feel better...maybe with my hands tied behind my back, maybe?" He gave Finn a sultry look. "Knowing that my future husband is a man who can march into a General's office with his resignation and walk out with a promotion gets me pretty hot, I'm not gonna lie. Or, we don't have to do that!" he added, trying to sound aloof about the idea. "I recognize it's a lot of work for you two, so whatever."

"And now you know what we were talking about when you walked in," Rey giggled, taking Poe's hand but looking to Finn.

"I'm curious how you're going to do anything with your hands tied behind your back, to be honest," Finn said, sitting up, and then laughing at the look Poe was giving him. “Okay, yes, you do have a very talented mouth.” Anyway, it sounded a lot better than chaining any of them to the bed, at least. "But...we can use something soft, right? Or...would that defeat the purpose? Anyway, guess we'll never know 'til we try," he told them.

Rey practically beamed and leaned over to kiss him. "It'll be great, I promise. You'll see," she reassured him.

"Yeah, I—yeah," Poe said. "We start easy. Whatever you're comfortable with, really, I mean it," he said, grabbing Finn's face and kissing his lips. "I'm gonna go get ready for bed, and then I'm all yours, okay? And if anyone needs to stop, for any reason—"

"‘Kylo Ren,’" Rey chirped, and Poe grimaced and laughed.

"Right. That's our safeword. Sure to kill any romance." Poe kissed them each on the cheek and darted into the washroom, shutting the door behind him.

Rey helped Finn get half undressed, and kissed him, deepening the kiss until it heated between them. "I love you," she said. "And I love Poe, and neither of us are going to hurt him," she said, sensing Finn's trepidation. "It's going to feel good for all of us. I did research!"

"You're very excited about this," Finn said, surprised. It wasn't that Rey never got excited when they were having sex—far from it—but she usually didn't seem this excited until something was actually happening, until _they_ started feeling good and she could enjoy that. But now she laughed, and it was such a sweet sound that Finn had to kiss her again.

"I—like the idea of having you both where I know no one can take you away from me, I guess. It's good." She nuzzled at his neck and then nipped gently, and he yelped, out of surprise rather than pain. "See? No harm done. But Poe will be very upset if we start without him," she said, and curled back into his lap like a cat, where he could stroke her hair and she could scratch his arm.

"Hardly. By all means, carry on, as long as I’m allowed to watch," Poe said, watching them from the door with a bit of a dazed smile. He had cleaned himself up a bit in the washroom but mostly he spent the private moment telling himself to keep it together because he still had to be the guide, here, even if the whole point was for him to let go, and hoping that it would work, and preparing to figure out new dynamics and preparing to probably be offended or kink-shamed on accident if they didn't understand something—and then trying to calm himself down. _They're doing this for you so you better as hell enjoy it, Dameron,_ he added, now just feeling guilty.

"How do you want me?" he said, with a convincing grin.

"Well, naked, ideally," Rey said. "And since it's our first time, we should definitely talk about what we want from this and what we want to do first." Rey glanced up sharply. "Especially if you're so nervous," she told Poe.

"I'm not nervous!" he protested, but his voice cracked.

"I can feel your heart pounding from here." Rey countered. She glared at Finn. "You, too."

"You're nervous?" Finn asked, surprised—he’d thought Poe couldn't possibly be worried about this. Far from making him more nervous, it was...actually kind of comforting. He looked down at Rey. "You're not worried at all, are you?" he asked, and she shook her head at him with a smile.

"You two are so worried about something going wrong. One of us has to be confident," she said as she motioned Poe over to join them.

"I'm not—worried about _me_ , for the record," Poe stammered, approaching the bed but remaining standing by it, and blushing so furiously that Rey could feel the heat from where she was. And he wasn't worried about Rey, who seemed onboard, and he didn't need to worry about Finn because Finn could clearly take care of himself. "I'm worried you'll hate it, or it'll trigger someone or something and—"

"Poe," Rey interrupted. "Am I allowed to tell you to shut up as part of this?"

Poe huffed, and smiled, relaxing his shoulders a bit. " _Yeah,_ " he said, with accidentally too much force, revealing how much he liked it.  

"Good. Then come here and sit down and we'll talk about this first, and afterward if I need you to shut up you're going to be a good boy and stop talking, right?"

Poe was humming as he slid into the bed, crossing his legs and looking at Rey like Finn had never seen him look before. "Yeah. Sounds good." Poe licked dry lips and refocused. "Um, okay, so you guys know what I want, ah, a bit of roughness and a bit of bondage—and in small increments is fine, because I want you guys to like it, too." He held their gazes each for long seconds and then let out a breath. "So...as far as you want to go."

"And, you're sure that's...okay?" Finn asked, suddenly. 

Poe looked at him, concerned. "I mean, I _am_ the one asking for it..."  

"No, I mean—okay, you don't have nightmares _as much_ anymore, but..." He shifted uncomfortably. "If we get—going, and you—what if you freak out? Because of something I did?" Finn's stomach knotted. "Because of something I _enjoyed_ doing?"  

Poe took Finn's hands. "Oh, _Force_ , Finn. Is—is that what you've been worried about?"

Finn nodded, and Poe leaned up to kiss his cheek.

"You're easily the best person in the world, you know that?" All this, and Finn was worried about _him._ "—I mean, okay, I haven't done this since...the _Finalizer_. And we had a rough _—day_ last week. But I'm good. It's different here, safe, with you, I swear. It won't mess me up or—trigger something." It was Poe's turn to be nervous. "Or, I don't think it will. I-if it does, I know what to say. But, Finn, Rey, I really want to try. _Because_ of what happened, more than ever."

"Replacing bad memories with good memories," Rey supplied.

"Exactly." Poe swallowed carefully. "We'll go slow?"

Finn considered this, and nodded. "I want to. I just—going slow is good."

Poe nodded. "Okay. Yeah." He smiled and leaned in for a kiss, at the end of which Finn was smiling. "What do you want out of this? Besides me not freaking out? What would make _you_ happy?"

Finn balked, not having expected this question, and he took a minute to think about it. “I really just need to be...here. Not thinking about twelve other things, just thinking about right here, right now." He hadn't thought much further than that both Rey and Poe wanted it, and he liked making them happy. "And I'd like to take you completely apart at the seams," he added, with a grin. 

Poe flushed. "Yeah, okay. We can do that. All that. I'm here, and Rey's here, and—"

"You can focus on Poe," Rey said, scrubbing her nails over the short hair at the nape of his neck. "And you can focus on me. You want me to call the shots, at first?" she offered.

Finn smiled, so grateful for a moment that it made him catch his breath. "Yes, please. It would be a shame not to use all that research you did, right?" he asked, and then looked at Poe. A little more enthusiastic now that he knew he wasn't all on his own, he leaned over to give him one very heated kiss before pulling away. "And later I'll pretend I'm in charge, because someone thinks it's funny when I think you're _not_ in charge," he told Rey with a laugh.

Poe barked a laugh, and Rey's smile grew bright and hungry. "Okay, how should we tie him up?" she asked, turning to rummage through her chest of belongings. "Unless you have any preferences, Poe?"

Poe's smile grew nervous and excited. "Uh, no. Even if I did, the point, for me, is kind of...that you decide. If you're okay with that?" It was hard to meet their eyes.

Rey could feel how nervous they both still were, and had a strong feeling that they just needed some gentle but firm encouragement. "Okay. So, Finn, I have this rope, and I practiced some ties. Hands in front or behind his back, or something else? And do you want to undress him, Finn? Or watch him do that himself?"

"In front, I think—in case we need to hold his hands over his head, you know?" Finn said, finally getting into this. Poe was giving him a sultry, come-hither look that made him want to drag him into his lap and kiss him senseless. But Poe was still dressed, and that certainly needed to change. "But first, I need those clothes off," he told Poe, without adding ‘if you'd like,’ even though he really wanted to.

"Yeah," Poe said breathily, a blush of arousal resting high on his cheeks and across his chest as Finn absolutely _pinned_ him with a stare. Yeah, this was focus. This was already beautiful. "Yeah, _please_ ," he said. "And—you can just—do it. Or tell me to do it. I want you to, I promise," he said, and then his brow furrowed and eyes cleared again. "Unless you don't want to—if you're sick of giving orders, after what you dealt with all day, I don't want to—"

"Oh, for the love of the Force!" Rey cried, because they were not going to get anywhere at this rate. "Poe, get off the bed and take your clothes off," she demanded. "And not another word unless me or Finn asks you a question or you need to say your safe word. Got it?"

Stomach flip-flopping in arousal, Poe nodded and scrambled out of bed with something like a yelp, and stripped in seconds.

Rey grinned at Finn playfully. "So...that could have been better. What do you think, Finn?"

"Could've," Finn agreed, doing his level best to suppress the instinct that told him to be nice and tell Poe he really hadn't done anything wrong, it was fine, it was actually kind of cute how eager Poe was to please them when he wasn't being bossy. "Maybe we could let it slide this time," he suggested, "After all, he's not used to not being in charge. He'll move slower now, right, Poe? Just as slow as we want," he said, the warning clear in his voice. He glanced over at Rey, needing some reassurance that he was doing this right.

Rey giggled and nodded at Finn, and kissed his cheek. "As slow as we want," she promised. "You want to tell him to pick up his clothes? I know you hate it when he leaves his things out."

“Oh, good point,” Finn said. “You know where those belong.”

Poe's stomach dropped, but in a delicious way. "Sorry," he blurted out. He eyed his clothes on the floor, and hastily shoved them in the hamper.

Finn waited until Poe came back in reach and then took his wrist (gently—he couldn't yet bring himself to be more rough about it). He kissed him and then looked over at Rey. "You want to tie him while I kiss him? It might be the only way to keep him from commentating," he said to her, already nudging and moving Poe exactly where he wanted him, where it would be easy for Rey to tie his hands while Finn kept him still and quiet.

Poe's gaze flickered between Rey's and Finn's eyes, trying to keep track of the situation and letting himself get lost in it. He let Finn maneuver him onto his back on the bed, not even testing his strength in case it spooked him, even though part of him really did want to.

"Good," Rey said, and "hands," she told Poe, straddling his waist and dropping her full weight across his hips.

Poe dutifully stretched out his wrists, humming as soft rope wound around them in a quick-release tie—almost as much for show as to actually hold him, but baby steps. "This okay?" he asked Finn.

Finn answered by kissing Poe hard, a little possessively, and only stopping when he needed to breathe. "You're not supposed to talk," he said, tracing a finger over Poe’s wet lips, and then added, "But yes." He heard Rey snort softly behind him.

"Mm," Poe said, smirking as Rey tightened the ropes around his wrists, and he tugged experimentally. Part of him must have expected a shock, because he tensed, but everything here was warm and comfortable and safe, so he relaxed immediately. It felt really _good._

"Okay, that’s not too tight?" she checked, and Poe twisted his wrists, trying to slip free, and had no immediate success.

"Not too tight. Not too loose, either," he said with a smirk.

This time, when Rey kissed him, she gripped him by the throat, putting a warning pressure on the sides of his neck that made him dizzy. "Now Finn," she said, when she was arbitrarily done and leaving him gasping for more, "I want you to kiss him, and pull his hair, and I want you to _watch_ him," she instructed, “just like Iolo said,” and, as an afterthought, released his throat.

"But how—okay," Finn said, because he'd passed officer exams, surely he could figure out how to kiss Poe and watch him at the same time. He ran his fingers through Poe's hair, first, and then nudged Rey out of his way so he could straddle Poe's hips next. When he kissed him, he tangled his fingers in his hair, too, and tugged just hard enough to tip Poe's head back and continue kissing down his neck, the watching forgotten once Poe started making soft, desperate sounds in the back of his throat.

Poe's whimpering grew almost obscene as Finn kissed down his neck, and he tried tugging against the hand in his hair but Finn's wrist gave him too much freedom, and he couldn't quite get it into painful, which was—frustrating. Except he couldn’t actually _complain_ about this wonderful scenario, and was scrabbling against Finn's chest with his bound hands and "Finn, Finn, fuck, Finn," he whined, hips arching up like he was trying to buck him off.

"Shush," Finn growled, using his weight to pin Poe's hips back to the bed while he curled his fingers tighter into his hair. He kissed down to the hollow at Poe's throat and sucked just hard enough to leave a mark there.

"Guhh _fuck yes_!" Poe cried, because _there_ it was, he wanted a thousand times more of that but it was something, and Rey brightened and laughed, observing them.

"Good, now slow it down, go as slow as you want. Make him beg for more," Rey coached, curling around behind Finn and smiling as he sat up. "See, told you you'd stop freaking out if you just let yourself act without thinking so much."

But at that, Finn came back to himself, shook off the pleasant headiness of acting without thinking and let go of Poe's hair. "I didn't—wait, I’m sorry, I wasn't thinking, I could have _hurt_ you," he said. He didn't trust himself to necessarily fully hear their safeword if Poe said it when he was too distracted by how wonderful Poe was like this. He also wasn't sure he trusted _Poe_ to say his safeword before things got desperate, either... "Fuck," he said, scrubbing his hand over his face. He was still pathetically, hopelessly aroused, which really wasn't helping. A large part of him wanted to pin Poe to the bed and take him apart the way Poe always did to him—but the other part of him was a little concerned at just how good it sounded to lose himself in wrecking Poe for as long as he possibly could.

"Damn it," Poe swore, as Finn pulled back, and he tried to grip him with his bound hands. "Finn—" he tried, but Rey, perhaps sensing where this was going, clapped a hand over his mouth.

"You. Hush," she said, and even though the short list of kinks Poe did _not_ have included being gagged, he allowed this for the moment with no more than a glower. " _Finn_ ," Rey said. "This is supposed to be relaxing, isn't it? What's wrong with getting relaxed?" Rey grabbed his chin and forced Finn to look at her. "Who is it you don't trust? Me, Poe, or yourself?"

Finn glared rebelliously at Rey as she held his chin, his only answer to her question a low growl. The answer, of course, was all of the above, but mostly that he in no way trusted himself.

Poe made a muffled sound, and she released his mouth. "You think I'm not _letting_ you do all of this?" he said. "I'm _in charge_ , Finn! Nothing is going to happen to me that I don't want happening, I swear to you!" he shouted, half sassing and half frustrated shouting. Clearly, Rey had done all the research and Finn had done none, because this was so basic. Finn clearly just wasn't interested and Poe should really stop pressuring him. "Look, maybe we should just..."

Poe was moving his hands—still bound—in something like exasperation, and Finn reached for his wrists to still them. "Stop _shouting_ ," he demanded, because they were not going to get into a shouting argument in the middle of sex.

"Finn!" Poe shouted anyway, but then Finn's hands were strong around his wrists, and they felt _good_. And just at that moment Rey opened up the bond between them, and Poe's arousal (which overwhelmed even his frustration) hit them hard. Nervous, strained, but definitely excited, yearning for more.

"Shh," Rey told Finn, sliding on top of Poe behind him and massaging his shoulders, kissing the back of his neck. "Can't you feel that? Can you feel how much he wants you? Don't you want to make him just _want_ you for...hours?"

Poe's mouth went dry, and he made a strangled sound. He squirmed, but they were both too heavy and too strong.

"Pull his hair, or bite him again. And _feel_ ," she encouraged, reaching behind her to rake her fingernails up his thighs, leaving behind red marks that made Poe gasp and jolted a rush of desire through all of them.

"But..." Finn was going to lose it. It was going to happen, and he was going to forget everything else for awhile except this bed and Poe and Rey and how good they felt. It was going to happen if he let it. And, oh, how he wanted to let it. He pushed a hand through Poe's hair and tugged experimentally.

It felt _good._  

That did it. He was tired of thinking constantly and worrying always and this was his chance to just...not. Poe and Rey were perfectly capable of putting a stop to it if it was necessary.

He resettled himself over Poe's hips, letting his weight press him against the bed, and pinned his hands above his head with his free hand. "I've got you," he said reassuringly, arching his own shoulders against Rey's hands as she rubbed and scratched at his back between rubbing and scratching Poe's legs.

Poe, who knew better than anyone what to expect from this, was startled by _not_ feeling that same rush and pleasure at all—because, in fact, this was suddenly amazingly  _better_.

Okay, he could handle more pain, but this was a start, and Finn's hand easily pining his wrists above his head was dizzying. And on top of his own feelings—the thrill and elation of feeling scared but safe—he’d always compared it to watching a rancor on a holo versus meeting a rancor in real life—the spike of adrenaline at sharp pain that went away almost immediately, being entirely helpless in the grasp of very merciful people—part of him _lived_ for this—and on top of that, he felt Finn and Rey feeling what they had done to him, and feeling their own joys, too, and it was near overwhelming. And they had just gotten started.

"Finn. Rey," he moaned, sure those were the only words he knew, and only after a few moments blinked his eyes open.

Rey was draped over Finn, scratching and massaging his back, which completely distracted Finn from doing—well, anything to him!

Rey laughed, as Poe's indignance suddenly broke through the pleasure. "I'm sorry, did you want something from us?" she wondered, teasing him rather cruelly and laughing at how that frustrated and embarrassed him—and turned him on, too.

"Come on," he begged, squirming in Finn's hold. "Please, you gotta give me something. I can make you feel good, be so good for you!" he promised.

"Good for us?" Rey giggled, wrapping her arms around Finn's waist.  "I think we told him not to speak without permission. Is he really being so good, Finn?"

"I think he's certainly _trying_ ," Finn answered, a hint of laughter in his voice. He tightened his grip on Poe's wrists so he couldn't wriggle out of his grasp. "Maybe he needs incentive." Finn bent to bite softly at Poe's collarbone, alternating kisses and little bites out to his shoulder. But the second Poe made a sound, he stopped and sat back, grinning. "How long do you think he can stay quiet if we stop every time he makes a sound?" he asked Rey mischievously.

Poe completely lost it at Finn's teasing, his cock instantly hard and hot, gods, he could go off at any second and he _tried_ , shifting his hips where Finn and Rey were both sitting on him, and he whimpered helplessly, only to have Finn pull back and smirk at him (finally enjoying this).

"Oh, fuck me," he whined. (He was very bad at this.)

Rey laughed. "Later, probably, if you're good," she told him, and swung off and around so she could face Finn. "You're doing so well, so beautifully. You both feel so good," she hummed, just for Finn, and grabbed Poe's wrists and crouched by his head to hold him down, and leaned over him to kiss Finn as slowly and deeply as she wanted. His mouth was wet and warm and gentle, but possessive, too, and every part of him was aching for more (Poe was _just_ an ache, quickly losing all else but need and desire and love and it was dizzying if she let herself get too deep, but it was intoxicating from the outside, to know that _they_ were doing that to him, to know and enjoy that power in a safe and loving way). Poe felt very naked, in part because he was naked while Rey and Finn still had some clothes on, but she could almost tangibly feel them taking him apart, piece by beautiful piece.

"I want you to try biting him," Rey suggested suddenly, "hard enough to leave a mark."

Finn looked down at Poe. "Yeah? You'd like that, huh?" he asked, and with excruciating slowness (this was not exactly easy for him to not rush, as it turned out) leaned to kiss the little mark he'd left on Poe's beautiful throat earlier. “Where everyone can see?” he hummed. He peppered gentle kisses back up to Poe's jaw, and pressed one just in front of his ear while he tangled his fingers back in his hair. Without any sort of warning, he acted as if he'd press another kiss to Poe's ear but, instead, tightened his grip in his hair and nipped his ear just hard enough to hurt.

The noise Poe made was obscene at that combination of tug and bite. He had probably heard tamer pornos, and was briefly glad that Finn and Rey had no basis for comparison. The "Fuck!" he shouted was more of a plea, and the "Yes!" a moan, and "Finn" and "Rey” were on repeat, and his hips canted up and fingers strained in Rey's hold. He couldn't move away from or closer to them and it was glorious—and then the crash of arousal hit them all like a tidal wave.

Rey gasped, digging her fingernails into Poe's wrists just to hold onto that feeling, to keep it going, and sweat beaded on all their foreheads at the same time. " _Yes_ ," she said, and heady with power, wanting more, wanting to watch, wanting to feel: "again. Do that again."

"Do what again?" Finn asked, "Do this?" He nipped Poe's ear again and scratched at his scalp, digging his nails in a little harder than he usually would. He shifted his weight to throw his ankles over Poe's shins, in the process resting more of his weight on Poe's hips. He rocked, grinding against him and pulling a groan from his own chest. "Good?" he asked Rey, pulling back, making it last.

This time Poe actually whimpered, nearing that horizon, and his hips bucked up but Finn was pinning him so firmly that all he could get was what Finn gave him. He grunted in frustration even as he tilted his chin up, offering them more, begging for more.

Rey let this continue as long as Finn seemed to be enjoying himself, and the longer he went, dotting bite marks and hickeys across Poe's skin, the more they both swelled with lust until it was almost something tangible in the room, the air crackling with it.

Or…maybe that was _her_. "Good, you're so good," she told them, kissing Finn's shoulder as they leaned forward against each other, tenting over Poe. And Finn moaned and drank in her kiss, and his love was so unfiltered and raw now, he didn't feel like he was afraid or holding back, and that of all things sent Poe over the edge with hardly a touch and hardly more than a gasp, spending with a  weak grunt across his chest.

"Poe," she hummed, when she broke off her leisurely kiss with Finn. "Who gave you permission?" she teased, though she wasn't going to enforce it (or, didn't think she would, until she felt that rush of heat she was beginning to learn was Poe's adrenaline from this). "Are you ready to fuck him, love?" she asked Finn, since that was kind of anticlimactic. "He’ll be very oversensitive now. Or if you're tired he could put his pretty mouth to work," she added in a teasing whisper, rubbing her fingernails gently up Finn's arm, in contrast to her nails on Poe's skin (she laughed that these different applications got almost got the same reaction from them). "Want to feel you, Finn. You feel so good like this." Like he had really let go for the first time, was feeling more than thinking. "I love you, Finn."

"I love you too," Finn said, stroking Poe's arm gently now, for just a moment basking in the feeling of someone doing what he commanded not because they were conditioned to listen to their superiors, but because they loved and trusted him. Rey and Poe trusted him more, even, than he trusted himself. "What do you think? Can you be good for me—let me fuck you?" he asked Poe, the question feeling less strange than ordinarily it would have.

Seeing or feeling something change in Finn (unless they were both imagining it), Rey kept quiet and Poe sat up—or tried.

"Yeah, yeah," he panted, urgent, like this was an offer that was limited time. "Please. Feel so good for you, Finn, and for Rey, too. How do you want me?" He squirmed again in their hold like he was going to roll over immediately.

Rey giggled. "He's very eager. Can we have him on his front? I want to play with his pretty tattoos."

"As you wish," Finn said, grinning. "But I think we have to let him up so he can move," he added. But first he stole one more kiss. It was slow and deep and almost reverent, a 'thank you for loving me and trusting me and knowing me.' For good measure, he turned to Rey after he'd kissed Poe and put a gentle hand under her chin, tipping it up just slightly before kissing her as well.

He still felt pleasantly slow, completely present in this one moment, when they broke apart. But Rey was looking at him with—with lust, maybe? And when she caught his confusion, she laughed.

"Just because it's not directed _at_ anything or anyone doesn't mean I don't feel it. Rarely, but..." but they'd never done all _this_ before. It was making her giddy. She sat back on her heels before motioning to the two of them to continue, already eyeing Poe's shoulders with an eager and scavenger-possessive gaze.

Poe raised an eyebrow at Rey, but he was mostly beyond words—beyond words that could handle _that_ , anyway—and as soon as they let him go he scrambled up and over, trying to prop himself up on knees and elbows because he was so _kriffing_ hard, again  _already,_ but Rey made short work of tugging his wrists out from under him so he collapsed with a muffled yelp. Ass up, face down, _oh_ yeah. Poe hadn’t felt this slutty in years. He moaned again when Rey began tracing her fingernails over the patterns of his tattoos, as if trying to raise red marks in the spaces not darkened by ink. "Gods, oh my _gods_ ," he moaned into the mattress, trying to squirm out of her hold and against her sharp fingernails like talons, trying to _offer_ himself to Finn. "Please, please yes, need—hhhnngh," he managed, hips shifting restlessly. He needed to be fucked _yesterday_.

"Okay, shh, be patient," Finn said as he sat back on his heels and reached for the lube on the side table. He slicked his fingers and started stretching Poe without much warning, progressing from one finger to three much more quickly than he ordinarily would have. Rey had completely opened the Force Bond, and for a moment he wasn't sure what was Poe and what was him and Rey was scratching both of them, rough and gentle at the same time. "Fuck," Finn gasped, and he needed to be inside Poe as badly as Poe needed him inside him. He shifted back up to his knees and undid his trousers to slick himself, just enough, then stroked down Poe's back. "Gonna be good for me? _Wait_ for me, this time," he told him, his hand ghosting over Poe's hip to wrap around his cock the way Poe had done to him before, when he wanted him to wait. "I'll make it easy for you," he said with a wicked grin, because touching Poe's cock was probably the exact opposite of that. With his other hand gripped tight on Poe's hip (there might be bruises, he thought), he slid into him and paused so they could collect themselves just a little. "You're good, you're so good—both of you. My loves, my perfect loves," Finn babbled as he started moving and heard _Rey_ gasp too, and curse softly in surprise at how overwhelming this was, and how perfectly incredible.

Poe had stopped breathing, at some point, or else his gulps of air were more for show. He was very quickly losing his kriffing _mind_ because Finn had him speared on his cock and was gripping his hip hard enough to bruise and probably gripping his cock hard enough to bruise, honestly, if that was possible, and why was that so hot?

Wait, wait, he was going to _wait_ , he told himself, and took a breath.

And Rey— _Rey_ —Poe could feel how _she_ was enjoying this, this pushed all her buttons and he couldn't tell which of the two of them were angrier at himself for not introducing this _sooner_. She was a dragon and he and Finn were the crowning gems in her hoard. If Poe didn't know any better, her desires felt almost sexual— _almost_ —but really, did he know anything now? No. He was there to be fucked, and to feel, and to love and be loved. He was there to wait. He was going to be good, and patient. He didn't need to _know_ anything, and he started to check out, climbing toward that peak, hoping to get high enough that he could just jump off and fly...

The noises Poe was making were dizzying, added to the strange swirl of lovely feelings inside Rey. She looked up and smiled at Finn, and their hands met and fingers tangled over Poe's sweaty, bowed back. Poe just felt _good_ , in a way she couldn't explain, but Finn felt proud-good, focused-good, warm-good and caring-good and strong-good. Peaceful-good. Comfortable-good.

A new, loud keen from Poe startled them both. "Please!" he begged, trying to lift his head from his awkward position. "Please, need to—I’m gonna—" but Rey cut the rest off by dragging a fingernail down the S-foil line that curved around his ribs, and he cried out and jerked in their hold like she was tickling him and hurting him at once. That feeling, whatever it was, across their bond, was like an electric shock through all of them. "So close," he moaned into the pillow, dropping his head once more.

Finn held Poe there—held all three of them there—safe and present and so overwhelmed that even Rey was only managing their names, spoken with a kind of earnest love that was heard as much as felt. He held them there until he thought he might burst from sheer overload of feelings, his and theirs, and when he could wait no more, he released Poe's cock with a soft muttered "Come for me, love, it's ok," and then he was over the edge, managing only to get his other hand on Poe's side, his fingers digging in and holding on of their own accord.

"Good, good, yes, Finn, Poe— _Force_ ," she moaned, unable to call on any higher power, and there was a distinctive tightening of her pelvis this time, and she was just thinking about getting her fingers between her legs—or—and she wasn't sure whose thought this was—Finn’s or Poe’s _mouth_ —but then first Finn and then Poe were screaming through their orgasms, bodies rigid and beautiful, like they were posing just for her, and then they all collapsed together, grunting and gasping and entirely spent.

"Beautiful, so good, so good for me," she whispered, petting their hair and kissing where she could reach.

"Finn. Rey," Poe was moaning, but he hissed and arched up suddenly, as Finn began to pull out. "Ow. _Ow_!" he groaned, but quickly recovered as Finn stopped, looking worried. "No, no, it's okay, it's fine, sorry. Good hurt." And it wasn't _exactly_ a "good hurt," Rey knew, because his thoughts were naked before her, but it was definitely a "worth it" hurt, and she would accept that.

Now, _now_ came the fun part. "Okay, hang on, both of you, lie still," she said, getting up and going for the supplies she already had prepared: a wet washcloth and sani-wipes, a clean blanket, three pouches of water, and cookies. "My boys, so good for me," she murmured, cleaning them up first. Poe still lay on his front, so she had to physically roll him over to clean him. "Can I untie you?" she asked, laying a hand on his wrists.

Poe took an experimental breath and blinked, but he could count all his limbs and most of his brain cells were working, he knew where he was and he thought he could even manage words if he had to. He nodded, smiling gratefully.

Finn wasn't sure how long he lay there just letting Rey clean them up with his brain not entirely there or coherent. She tugged him out of his clothes the rest of the way and he curled up around Poe, naked and content. He dragged himself back to earth as she was freeing Poe's wrists, and managed to shift so he could gently reach for one. There were marks, and he gently brushed his fingertips over them. "You sure you're okay?" he asked. Poe's hair was still all messed up and scruffy, and he looked so sated and relaxed and _happy_ and Rey looked so pleased with the both of them that he lost the words he'd thought he had. Loathe to interrupt the quiet of three mingled breaths, he merely reached a hand up for Rey while still gently holding Poe's.

"Yeah, _yeah_ ," Poe said, and a grin stole across his face, making his eyes crinkle, and something like a chuckle escaped. He felt loose and free—not quite Flying, but it was good. He glanced down at himself, touching marks and bruises reverently, hoping each one would still be there in the morning. He wished he had the strength to jump up into the bathroom to look in the mirror, because he felt welts and hickeys all over his chest and neck and back and— _wow_. "I'm great. Feels _great_. Are you two okay?"

Rey hummed and nodded. She was tracing marks on his skin, too, fascinated by them, and smiling a secret smile. "Here," she managed after a few minutes, and handed them each a pouch of water. "Drink."

Poe's body was obeying before his mind realized there was a demand on it. The water tasted _so_ good and he was _so_ thirsty.

"Roll over," she ordered when they were finished, and he was aware of Rey applying a bacta gel to one spot on his shoulder before he was aware of moving. "I think I got overzealous with my fingernails. Just being safe. You liked that? Or are you not ready to talk yet?"

"I'll—be ready in a minute," Poe said, sitting up and capturing her lips in a kiss. "After I kiss the hell out of you both." He grinned and slid on top of Finn, kissing him deeply, languidly, _gratefully_. Rey giggled as he came back to kiss her and then finally settled on Finn, not sure his arms would support him for another round. "That was—amazing. I love you. I love you both."

"I love you both, too," Rey said, tucking herself against them so that she had them both in her arms. "I'd have never—thought that was _okay_ before—and it felt so good. I really liked it." She nuzzled them both. "I like taking care of you after, too." Like cleaning and putting away tools or—toys—when you were done with them. It made her feel organized and safe, in a way, but she also wasn’t sure that wasn’t too creepy, so she didn’t say it aloud.

"I like it when you take care of us," Finn said, smiling as Rey snuggled up next to him and Poe draped himself basically on top of him. He wasn't really ready to talk either, content to let Rey take control of the situation. But he touched them, light brushes of fingertips on marks and freckles and shadows, old scars and new bruises. "I love you," he managed as he continued drawing light lines across their skin.

Poe hummed, letting himself enjoy this and just feel safe. But he was also eager to talk about it, eager to praise, to thank, to say where they could go further next time, if they wanted. "I liked...I like it when I can feel you the next day. Bruises feel good. Whatever the hell you were doing to my back felt amazing, Rey."

Rey nodded. "To me, too. I'm thinking I'll use a tool next time, though. I want you to think about me and Finn every time you move or stretch or see a mark that we gave you." She giggled and squirmed. "I want all your pilots to tease you and know who you belong to."

Poe smiled, burying his face in Finn's chest. "Yeah. Me, too."

"And I'm thinking actual metal cuffs. To the bed," Rey said. "If that would be okay? That wouldn't hurt you or...trigger you?"

"Pfff, no. Not with you two there, making it impossible to forget where I am." Poe looked up at Finn. "Would that be okay with you? Was—was _I_ good? What you wanted? Can I make it better for you...in any way?"

Finn smiled down at Poe, maybe a little sheepishly. "You were beautiful. And—it wasn't half as difficult as I thought it would be, once we got going," he admitted. "I... Really like knowing that you're doing what I tell you because you want to, and not because you've been conditioned to take orders." Rey hummed and nuzzled at his neck. “That’s—kind of huge.”

"You like it when I take charge and tell you what to do to him, too," she said with a wicked grin, and he barked a laugh:

"I am still very comfortable with _following_ orders, mostly, yes," he answered. That was something he certainly couldn't deny. "If you have the situation under control, then I don't have to. I'm not really used to not worrying. It's...really nice." He could still touch that feeling of being completely in the moment, of nothing in the world existing outside Poe and Rey. Some of the world had come rushing back now, but it still felt...distant, somehow. It was the most relaxed he'd been in a long time.

Rey hummed and kissed Finn's cheek. "You feel really nice when you're not worrying. Really strong, really _right_."

Poe moaned, closing his eyes and enjoying how good it felt—how good he felt, how good everyone felt right now. "You were amazing. You were both amazing. I really haven't felt that good in a long time and—when I'm not exhausted you can expect to be drowned in kisses and attention—probably tomorrow," he said with a yawn. He stretched, curling around both of them as much as he could with uncoordinated limbs.

"But we didn't get you to 'flying,' did we?" Rey said. She had read about that in some of Poe's books, only they called it 'subspace.'

Poe's eyes opened. "No, but—it still felt _amazing_. Sometimes I don't get there, and that's okay. We can try again, since no one hated it. Maybe kick up the pain another notch? Or make it last longer." He grinned. "How's that sound, Finno? Slower the better—though I can't be held responsible for anything I say or do while you're stringing me along." Poe winked and buried his face in between their bodies, filling his nostrils with their smell.

"Slower? Won't that make your head explode?" Finn asked, and laughed. "I'm not sure I remember how to go slower. I may need a refresher course," he suggested, which made both Rey and Poe laugh.

"All you have to do is ask," Poe answered. He and Finn gave each other a look that would have turned into kissing each other senseless if they hadn't already been so blissfully happy and disinclined to move.

"That was...different," Rey commented eventually, and they both looked at her in question. "I mean. It felt different. For me. Usually it just feels like... It's pure goodness and love when you two both come at once, for each other and for me and you're so happy just to have that moment shared three ways. But that time was different? It wasn't just that. There was more fire in it that time," she said. She hugged them both, and Poe slid to one side so they could each pillow their heads on her chest, and Poe and Finn both paused, glancing at each other.

"So that wasn't just me, then," Poe said.

"I thought it might have been one of us," Finn admitted.

Rey shrugged. "I mean, I'm pretty sure it was me. It was nice." 

Poe giggled immaturely. "I think we found Rey's kink," he said.

Rey pulled his hair in retaliation, though of course that wasn't a good way to get him to modify his behavior, and he kept giggling to himself.

"I still don't feel any different. I mean look at me, I've got two gorgeous naked men in my arms and I don't feel, well, more than my usual attraction to you."

"It's fine, like I said, everyone's different. Some girls need to tie up their boyfriends to get them there— _yeeow_!" he yelped as she had finally had enough teasing and twisted his ear, which was sensitive where Finn had bitten it. "Ouch!"

Finn laughed and played with a strand of Rey's hair that was in his face. "You had that coming," he told Poe, and then put the strand of hair under his nose like a moustache, cackling when Rey shifted to get a better look at him.

"No," she told him.

"Whatever you say, love."

"You look ridiculous."

"You have ‘ridiculous’ and ‘dashingly handsome’ confused." Rey laughed at that and ran a hand over his very short hair. "What was it about all of that that turned you on, Rey?" he asked curiously.

Rey considered this, running her fingers through their hair. "I'm not sure. The intensity, maybe? But it's been that high before. Maybe just...knowing I had you. That I could keep you. But also that you wanted to stay." She smiled wetly. "That means a lot."

Poe got up on an elbow to kiss her. "That's the sweetest thing I've ever heard," he said. "Though I'm still disappointed you're not going to break out the whips and chains next time," he laughed.

"Who says I‘m not?" she answered with a smug and playful grin.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More "stormpilot" in this one, but some jedistormpilot smut in the next chapter. You deal with our adorable side-ship, we give you smut in return.

Jessika hadn't spent as much time with the troopers as she meant to, but when she got back from patrol she was glad to see Punch, now officially Sevens, in the line for food. "Hey, Sevens, how are you?" she asked, bumping their arm gently.

Sevens hadn't had a good day. It had started after too little sleep because they hadn't been tired until the early morning, and then the organization in weapons storage had been wrong and inefficient and stupid and they weren't allowed to fix it, and now they were in the lunch line trying not to completely lose it over what foods to choose to eat.

This would have been much easier if people would stop colliding with them in the process of getting food. They started and jumped away when someone purposely bumped them, only belatedly realizing the someone was a friend. "I'm fine," they said brusquely, pretending that hadn't been the slightest bit startled.

"Oh! Whoa, sorry," Jessika said, giving Sevens their space and logging that away to not do again. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. How was your day? Did ya miss me?" _Oh gods why had she said that?_ "I mean—never mind, it’s just a joke. How was your day?" she tried again.

"It was fine," they answered, then realized this might be suspicious and added, "I'm glad it's time to eat, and that I have the afternoon off." This was true—they were going to lock themselves in the shared quarters as soon as they were done eating and avoid everything. Maybe they'd take a nap, or just sleep clear through to tomorrow—they hadn't decided yet. First, they had to get through lunch.

"You and me both," Jess said with a grin, and they found a table together and Jess launched into the story of her day, since Sevens didn't seem like they wanted to talk. But Sevens was also picking listlessly at their food, looking like they had to eat it more than they wanted to. "Aren't you hungry?" Jess checked. "If you don't like it I’ll eat yours and you can try something else."

"I'm not that hungry, no. It looked good when I got it," Sevens answered, and took a hesitant bite of the chicken on their plate. There wasn't anything wrong with it, certainly. The food here was amazing, really, and there was so much variety. But sometimes nothing really sounded good. "I'll be hungry by dinner, so I thought I'd at least try to eat something," they tried to explain. In all actuality, they didn't really plan on eating dinner if they hadn't snapped themselves out of this by then.

"You could save it? We could go for a walk?" Jess offered, and then felt like she was being overbearing, and pulled back. "Or I could leave you alone! Sorry, gosh, I'm just—er—I’m gonna go see what Snap..." But she trailed off. There was something obviously bothering Sevens, something big that probably needed to be talked through and dealt with. She'd heard about what happened to Bastian with the trooper siblings, and while she didn't want her nose busted, Jess didn't really want anyone else getting their nose busted trying to figure out what was eating Sevens. "Or you could tell me what's wrong. I _am_ supposed to be here to help. It's my job. And I do care."

"But you can't _help_ and I should be able to do it on my own," Sevens said suddenly after a long period of complete and awkward silence. "There's nothing _wrong_ except with me."

"Why can't I help?" Jess replied evenly. "You don't have to do it alone, Sevens, I'm serious. That's First Order bantha shit, come on. You can tell me anything. I won't laugh or think less of you, I promise."

"It's stupid," Sevens said, but Jess just kept looking at them expectantly, pleasantly, just waiting for them to get too uncomfortable with silence and speak. "They won't let me organize the weapons locker. It makes no sense, and it's inefficient, and when we get attacked it will be a liability and they won't let me fix it," they said in a rush, and pushed their tray away and almost off the table in frustration.

Jess frowned. "It's that bad, huh?" She said, biting her lip. Sevens nodded, and now that they mentioned it, Jess remembered it bothering Deeks, too, and maybe even Finn. "Guess even the Evil First Order can get some things, right, huh? Okay. Let me go see...will you wait for me here? Try to finish your lunch if you can."

Jess got up, taking the fruit from her tray and sticking it in her flightsuit for later. Finn, Finn, she had to find Finn...

"Finn!" she said, glad to find him in the gym without too much trouble. "Can you help me talk to Gunny Fostoria? I'm thinking were going to have a meltdown on our hands if the armory stays like it is. If not Sevens then another trooper. Only I don't exactly have the jurisdiction without you..."

"Oh, yeah, it's awful. I try to only be in there if I'm cleaning weapons... Otherwise I send one of the recruits to gather weapons if we need them," Finn said, dropping down from the chin-up bar and tossing his towel in a hamper nearby. "Guess Sevens isn't finding it that easy..." He wondered if they'd been one of the ones in charge of one of the many weapons lockers on First Order ships and bases. It would make sense, given the ease with which they picked up some of the unfamiliar Resistance weapons. "Let's go see what we can do," he said to Jess.

Fostoria was a cantankerous old crone, but Finn was a sweetheart, and worked the angle of _pity these poor ex-stormtroopers and the evil regime that made them hate the slightest disorder_. Even Jess could see where things could be handled better in the armory, but because "wouldn't you like to help the adjustment of these poor order-driven children? It's them, not you, don't worry" was emphasized, Fostoria turned it over to Finn without much trouble.

"You're the best, Finn," Jess said, giving him a quick hug before sprinting bank to the mess hall to find Sevens.

Sevens looked up as Jess walked into the cafeteria, having tried to finish their lunch with only limited success. Jess didn't look like she was running, but she was breathing hard, and Sevens gave her a questioning look. "Did you run here?" they asked.

"Yes!" Jess puffed, and then had to sit down, but she maintained you'd be hard pressed to find one Resistance pilot who kept up with their PT on the regular. "Sorry—armory. Finn—woo!" Jessika took a few gulps of air. "Finn's talking to Fostoria. I thought you might like to be a part of the armory reorganization?"

"Wait but—" Sevens started, gaped a little, then continued. "She wouldn't even entertain the idea earlier. What did you threaten her with?" they asked. If Fostoria found out it had originated with Sevens, she had every ability to make them completely miserable. But...that armory really did need to be reorganized, so at least Jess and Finn had succeeded on that count. "I mean, yes, I would like to help," they said.

Jessika beamed. "Great! Want to bring your food, or—?" She pulled the fruit from her pocket and began munching on it loudly as Sevens took their tray up. "Finn's just awesome, and such a sweetheart, and Fostoria is very kind, actually, deep down." She giggled. "Deep, deep down."

"So he just...convinced her? Is she angry?" Sevens asked. They picked through their food for something to eat on the way, not wanting to take food into the armory and risk getting it on or in the weapons.

"Yeah! I mean no. He just convinced her: she's not angry," Jess said brightly, and when they made it to the armory Finn already had the inventory pulled up on his datapad.

Jessika was excited and full of energy, sure that she was prepared to help two stormtroopers reorganize a weapons locker.

She was not, actually.

"Stop! No power packs of different calibers together, Jessika!"

"Melee weapons in increasing sizes and damage increments here."

"Don't put them back yet, that locker needs to be cleaned out first."

Jessika was...exhausted by the end, but both Finn and Sevens looked...really happy, so.

Sevens stood in the doorway next to Finn, looking over the armory, checking that nothing was out of place or put away incorrectly.

"That's been annoying me since the first time I saw it," Finn said, and looked over at Sevens with a grin.

"This is much more efficient. And it's safer—you don't have the high-powered weapons next to the sensitive ammunition, so if there's an accident, one doesn't set off the other," they agreed. The least specialized weapons were now the easiest to reach, in plain view as soon as the door was open—in an attack, no one would have to look for them. "Anyone used to the old system will have to relearn this one," Sevens added, but Finn shrugged.

"This one actually makes sense, so it should be fine. Don't worry about them—it’s good for ‘em."

"Thank you, Jess. I think I'll be able to eat dinner," Sevens said to the pilot, who was standing on their other side and looked about ready to drop.

"Uhh, yeah, okay, great," Jessika said, still dazed, but she had the sense to pull her hair up into a ponytail, since it was sweaty and stringy now. She couldn't decide if she was more hungry or more tired, but decided she deserved Sevens' smile for putting up with their anal retentiveness. "Yeah. So that was good? Feel better?" she asked conversationally as they made their way back to the mess hall. "Finn, I had no idea that was bugging you that much that whole time!"

Finn shrugged. "It's not like I live in a highly organized space...I've kind of grown used to being slightly bugged by disorganization...like, all the time. You should see Poe's sock drawer," he laughed. Sometimes it closed all the way, but generally there was a toe of some sock or other sticking out and stopping it closing, and Poe was forever losing socks not because they were actually lost, but because he refused to bundle pairs together and organize them in his drawer in some reasonable fashion. Finn's socks were _much_ neater. Rey had her own version of organization that resulted in pairs of socks randomly falling on you when you least expected it. He had no idea how she remembered where she'd stashed all of them, but the time he'd asked, she'd just looked around their room and cackled. "Anyway, Sevens, if something like that is bothering you again—talk to Jess, or me, or even Dr. Kalonia if you'd be more comfortable with that. These are things we can deal with," he told Sevens, who at least seemed more at-ease than they'd been earlier.

"The door on our barracks sometimes doesn't lock and I don't understand why," they blurted out once they were all in the cafeteria line.

"Oh!" Jess said. "That...was a security measure, ah, at first. Sorry. And obviously not a very good one..." she laughed, a bit slap-happy. Pilots weren't made for this kind of work. She looked at Finn. "You can get that taken care of, right?" And, since she was chatty when she was tired, her laugh turned immature: "Anyway, you know we've been waiting for our Commander to settle down with someone who will make him clean up his act. You're letting us down, Finnegan! Where is he, by the way? You seem to spend more time with us than you do with him and Rey, these days."

Sevens pointed. "He's over there, with Rey. I don't mean to keep you from your social obligations, Major."

"It's not the amount of time, it's the quality—and let's just say it is very high quality time," Finn said to Jess, who wrinkled her nose.

"Gross."

Finn just grinned at her before turning to Sevens. "You're not keeping me from anything. I've been wanting to do that forever. I'm glad you said something to Jess," he told them.

"I'm glad she dropped everything just to help me," Sevens answered, blushing a little.

“Jess is one of the best people on base. There’s a reason she’s going to be my maid of honor in our wedding,” Finn said.

"She is standing right here, you know," Jess said, already going bright red. Sevens turned to her and looked her right in the eyes and smiled a little—shyly? Jess hadn't known they could do that.

"Thank you," Sevens said earnestly, and Finn looked between them with narrowed eyes. He grinned at how the pair of them were looking at each other.

"You're welcome, it was nothing—I mean, not that I wouldn't help with something that wasn't nothing but—hey, I'm hungry, are you hungry?" Jess stammered, and Finn barked a laugh before walking away to sit with Rey and Poe.

"Er—yes. Dinner. That's why we're here, right?" Sevens asked.

"Yeah, dinner," Jessika said, though she wasn't positive what she put on her plate by the end (though she could blame exhaustion). "Uh. So that's what you guys do for fun? I mean I didn't expect it to be such a big hit." Sevens' intense gaze was giving her funny melty feelings. Shit. She was going to have to report herself. She'd have to be taken off the stormtrooper recovery task force.

"I guess for certain definitions of fun. It's sure better than being yelled at." They felt better now, but already they were struggling with not going back to check that nothing needed to be changed or rearranged. They supposed they could check tomorrow, though. It wouldn't be fair to drag Jessika back over there after dinner just to check—and Sevens was pretty sure she'd follow even if she was practically comatose. "I always liked training best. I could do things in whatever order I wanted as long as they got done, and if it wasn't a supervised training exercise, we were mostly free to do what we wanted," they said.

"That sounds nice," Jessika said dreamily. "You're good at that. Er, I mean. It's just that when you run or lift weights—not that I watch, um." She laughed. "Sorry, I'm so tired. I'm not making any sense. Ignore me!" Jess was glad Finn had gone to sit with Rey and Poe and wasn’t watching this train wreck. Even he would probably be able to tell she had it bad.

"Once a year we had this race, out in the snow, and they'd drop us off in the middle of nowhere and only send enough transports to the rendezvous for 90% of us. The others were probably still frozen out there when the planet blew up," they said, and then grinned at the look of horror on Jess's face and started cackling. "I'm kidding! They never did that. That would be stupid and wasteful and there were much better ways to waste recruits, like sending them to feed the rancor. That was also a joke." They laughed and patted Jess's shoulder apologetically. "We did not have a rancor."

Jess dropped her head into her hands and laughed until she nearly cried. "Oh gods, are you for real?" She was almost used to Sevens' jokes by now, but they still startled her, because their delivery was so dry. "You're pretty funny, you know that?" she said, beaming at them sideways. "Though, I think I'd like to hear you—make jokes that don't scare the shit out of me, too, though, ha."

Sevens paused. "What we actually did with the new stormtroopers— _recruits_ sounds like they had a choice—was send them on a snipe hunt. No one was ever sure what a snipe _was_ but they'd bring back all sorts of things. I brought back a piece of a TIE Fighter wing, though I don't remember thinking that's what it was at the time." They paused, thinking all the way back. Their hunt had been in the middle of a desert. "One of my cohort-mates found an egg and it hatched in the compactor and now we don't use that compactor because it never did get compacted and I think maybe it was a baby Krayt Dragon or something." They hoped it had destroyed the base and freed itself...but Sevens couldn't even remember what planet that had been.

Jess laughed. "I'm actually surprised you even know what snow is. The way Finn talks it's like he never left the _Finalizer_ ," she said. "But that's stupid, of course they must have trained you on Starkiller." This was kind of a depressing conversation, though, so, "But yeah, we tease newbies all the time. Nien Nunb once told me to get him some headlight fluid. Back before I joined the Resistance, I'd give shit to any pilot not from my system who came by to refuel. Let me tell you about how I met Snap..."

 


	15. Chapter 15

By the time they made it to their room that evening, Poe made a beeline for the bed. "Now I get to study new starcharts, courtesy of the First Order and their beautifully integrated nav system," he said with a sigh, picking up his datapad and lying back. It hadn’t taken their techs long to begin cracking the _Vapor_ ’s systems, and with it came a bunch of new data that was really going to help the Resistance.

"Aww, I wanted to watch more _Clone Wars_ ," Rey said.

"Ah, not without me!" Poe complained, though he'd seen it a hundred times.

Finn stood inside their door for a moment when they returned, just watching Rey and Poe be who they were. He realized he'd been smiling like a dope when it turned into a frown as he looked at their dresser. "Jess and Sevens and I reorganized the armory today," he said, and meandered over to sit on the edge of the bed. Rey went by, hunting for some electronic or something for the little—well, whatever it was in her hand—and stopped to give him a kiss.

"Jess and Sevens?" she asked, and he nodded.

"By the way, Poe, I think your pilot has a crush. But it kinda got me thinking...your sock drawer kind of makes me want to burn it down, and I thought maybe I could organize it. Just a little," he ventured.

"Jessika?!" Poe squeaked. "And _Sevens_? No way, Jess is way too gay for—wait what about burning where now?" Poe let what Finn said catch up with him. "You want to organize my socks? You didn't organize enough today? Come on, buddy, it's time to relax." Poe toed off his boots and slid a leg around Finn's lap in a half-assed attempt to pull him further onto the bed. "I can think of sixty better ways we could spend the evening. Thirty better positions." He waggled his eyebrows. 

Rey giggled. "His socks aren't that bad, Finn. I mean the drawer closes most days."

"Are you guys making fun of me? My socks are fine! I need big warm socks for deep space and they take up a lot of room! I think _you_ get spoiled in your climate controlled freighter, little missy!" Poe laughed, and started a tickle war.

After their very short tickle fight (it ended when Finn nearly kicked Rey in the stomach for tickling his foot), Finn was quiet for a minute before he popped back up and went to the dresser. "Okay but seriously, how do you even find socks? They're not even in _pairs_ , Poe Dameron. It's mayhem." He demonstrated by pulling open the drawer—three single socks spilled out and he looked over at Poe and Rey.

"I—look, Finno, sweetheart, it's okay," Poe said easily. "It really does not actually affect me or hurt me in my daily life. Don't worry about it."

[You are often late because you are looking for socks] BB-8 hooted unhelpfully.

"All right, no one asked you," Poe said hastily. "But, whatever. If it makes you feel better, darling, go for it," he told Finn, returning his attention to his datapad. This was to be his married life, apparently, having his things gone through, inventoried, and organized by his spouses. But Finn wasn't done quickly, and Poe looked up again with a sigh. "Okay, Finn, what is it?"

Finn sighed. "If I do it, it'll last maybe a week before you give up and go back to the way it was," he said. It wasn't much use him organizing Poe's socks if he still couldn't find anything. "And it won't be so bad if we both do it—it’ll take like five minutes."

Poe sat up, defensive. "Seriously, Finn? Socks? This is the hill you want to fight and—" But Poe let the rest out in a grunting sigh. " _Finn_ ," he growled, but he tossed the datapad back onto the bed and sat up. 'Happy spouse, happy house,' was the mantra he had taken up, in his head mostly, when his significant others were being annoying. "How come you don't make Rey organize her socks?" he grumbled as he slid onto the floor, well aware he sounded like a petulant child.

"He can if he finds them!" Rey said, and cackled.

"And as a result, they're not spilling out of a drawer and keeping the other drawer from closing and ending up on the floor when she can't find the ones she wants," Finn added.

"They might be..." Rey said, apparently in the mood to stir things up by playing devil’s advocate to them both. Finn gave her A Look and she cackled again.

Only because Rey was illustrating how silly this all was, Poe rolled his eyes and let the almost-anger out in a huff of laughter. Socks were not a hill _he_ would fight and die on. If organizing—okay, this was basic cleaning, actually—if unfucking his habitat made Finn even a little happy, he could be a man about it. "Okay, okay, you're right. It's time for a cull." He drew out singles who had long lost their mates and a few with large holes in the toes or heels, tossing these in the trash chute.

"Woohoo, _Clone Wars_!" Rey cried, and BB-8 must have been in cahoots with her, because they flicked on the next episode immediately.

"Oh, man, I freaking hate this episode,” Poe said, when he saw what was happening. “I mean I love it. This is the Jedi who treats the Clones like shit and ends up being—well, you'll see. I hate this guy. A cartoon shouldn't have the power to make me so _mad_..."

"But socks do?" Rey pressed, and Poe balled a pair and launched them at her head.

"Hey!" Rey cried as the sock missile bonked her in the face, but at the same moment Poe cried "Hey!" and then laughed, peering at the bottom of his sock drawer. " _That's_ where those got to!"

"Where what got to?" Finn asked, craning his neck to see over Poe's shoulder. "What in the world _are_ those?" he asked curiously, tipping his head to either side to try to view them from an angle that made sense. They looked like mechanical devices. Maybe parts to ships?

"Haha," Poe said, and laughed long enough that Rey came over to peer inside. "Ah. Those, my dearests, are masturbatory aids." He blushed as they continued to look confused—not the 'Wordly Poe, we are Innocent and need you to Enlighten us' but the 'Oh no we heard you the first time, we are just Concerned' look. He clarified to make himself feel better. "Sex toys. Which, you can imagine, I haven't needed in quite a while, and which I should probably get rid of, haha," (he tended to _say_ 'haha' rather than laugh when he was nervous) "who needs sex toys when you have two beautiful betrotheds?"

But now Rey was curious. "How do they work? I thought you just use your hand?"

"Er," Poe said, now a little out of his depth and more inappropriately aroused than he had a right to be in this moment. Finn was flushed and not any help, so Poe continued: "Yep. Can use my hand. These are not for that." He coughed. Okay, there was no reason to be embarrassed about this. "This one is a vibrator. It's got, ah, multiple settings..." He picked it up and turned it on to demonstrate. It was still, surprisingly, charged. "You, ah, well, I stick this in—" he laughed, suddenly, a genuine laugh now, considering the device closely. "You know, Finn, I would bet anything this is about your size. Like, I mean, I promise I love you for more than your dick, but I may have a type?"

Rey considered the instrument with clinical curiosity. "Ew wait I touched it!"

"It's _clean_! What kind of animal do you think I am?"

"Okay well that's what's this one?" she asked, pointing

"Aaand that one's a butt plug. It's, ah, you wear it. To sort of...relax...and...stimulate—look, why is _Rey_ more interested in what these are?"

"For...reasons?" Finn asked, considering the assortment of ‘toys.’ "Why _are_ you so interested?" he asked her, and she grinned.

"You ever use them with other people?" she asked, and Finn's eyes went wide. He understood what she was implying now, and he felt a thrill at the thought of using one of these in pursuit of taking Poe even more thoroughly to pieces than they'd managed when they tried tying him up. Where had this fascination with having Poe helpless (because he wanted to be) and needy and beautiful before him come from?

Rey snorted and he realized he wasn't keeping those thoughts to himself...

Poe hummed. " _Ohh_ yeah," he said, smiling at Rey and startling Finn out of his thoughts with a kiss. "Sort of more fun that way, in my opinion. We could try them out on Finn, if you want a demonstration." Poe winked, and Rey's eyes grew wide and hungry, and Finn’s mouth opened but he didn’t say anything. "Oh wait wait hang on," Poe laughed, fishing around in his sock drawer and then withdrawing a final toy with triumph. "Finn's gonna like this one. This goes around your cock, see, nice and snug around the base, and it doesn't exactly _prevent_ you from coming, but makes you last a lot longer and come harder." He bit his lip and raised an eyebrow at Finn, wondering why he hadn't brought these out earlier, actually. "What do you say, Finno?"

"After _Clone Wars_ , though," Rey said, grinning evilly.

"After _Clone Wars_ ," Poe agreed. 

Finn's eyes darkened as he considered this. If anything, the thought of Poe and Rey demonstrating by using the toys on him first got him even more aroused than the reverse situation. Finn was only half-surprised to feel himself nodding, mouth gone a little dry.

He collected himself, though. _Clone Wars first, Finn, you can do this. Don't think about that thing around your cock and—_ "Sorry, I swear I'm paying attention," he said, and this time he was definitely embarrassed. Surely he could hold it together better than this.

Poe and Rey knocked into each other on their way to kiss Finn, and once negotiated it turned into a heated three-way kiss. "Before we start watching, I want to show him how this works," Poe said, holding up the plug. It wasn't a very wide or long bulb, but enough to be noticed after a while, and it tapered a little before flaring out again to sit firmly inside. "Want to put this inside him, let him feel good and full and just wait for us, hm?"

Rey beamed. "This one, too," she said, picking up the cock ring. "In case he can't wait."

"That's the quick-release," Poe said, as she fiddled with the mechanism on the side. " _If_ we decide to be merciful."

"How about it, Finn?" Rey said.

"Um. Yes—I mean, that sounds good, yes," Finn answered, eyeing both the plug and the ring. His affianced were going to be the death of him. He kissed them each and drew them back toward the bed, trying to get his pants off and yelping in surprise when Rey batted his hands away gently and kissed him again.

"Let me?" she asked, and it was so sweet and shy and at odds with the way she was crowding him back against the bed that he nodded mutely before finding his voice.

"Mmmmm, of course," he hummed.

Poe grinned. "And then he can watch me organize my socks by length, weight, and color, and we'll have hit all of his kinks," he teased, kissing Finn's subsequent glare away as Rey divested him of his pants.

She appeared to know instinctively how the ring fit on, and how it tightened to an uncomfortable but not painful squeeze. Poe grinned, as Finn was already obviously enjoying this, even before he began fingering him open enough to slide the plug in to its base. "There we go, how's that feel?" Poe hummed, and Rey removed Finn's shirt, as an afterthought.

Finn was already tensed, but he made himself relax, telling himself that patience now would pay off later. Still, his voice sounded a little odd to his ears when he answered Poe's question. "Weird? Good weird. How—can I, uh, can I move?" he asked.

"Yeah, for now," Rey said, sliding off him to talk with BB-8 about putting the episode back on even though, yes, they were also doing disgusting organic things.

"Definitely yeah. That thing inside you won't be nearly as much fun if you hold still." Poe knelt to put his socks away (the organizing had been a joke) and returned to bed just as the episode was restarting. He shucked off his shirt and leaned against the headboard, beckoning Finn to slide back and rest against his shoulder. Rey was wearing nothing but one of Finn's shirts, which was too large on her but was so thin it left little to the imagination, and she settled on Finn's other side.

The episode was thoroughly distracting—for Rey and Poe—as it asked a lot of tough questions about the nature of humanity that was strange in a cartoon for kids.

Finn scrunched back to sit next to Poe, gasping and sweating a little as he got settled and Rey joined them. He had a little bit of trouble concentrating, especially when Rey or Poe would move and cause him to shift, but every time he moved even a little and gasped or whimpered, Rey would reach over and gently scratch his arm. By the time the episode was over, he was already half hard, Rey's attempts to relax him notwithstanding.

"One more episode?" Poe offered, winking at Rey over Finn's head.

"Oh, yeah! One more!" she readily agreed, her smile huge as she slid an arm around Finn’s chest and a naked leg over Finn's hips. "That all right with you, Finn?" she asked sweetly.

"Yeah, that all right with you, buddy?" Poe asked, barely able to keep a straight face as he too curled around Finn, sliding skin against skin. He could feel Finn trembling from here, and Finn was pressing his lips together so cutely Poe wasn't sure he couldn't die from it.

"But—but—" Finn whimpered as Rey reached for his arm and scratched softly, while Poe curled closer and rearranged him just slightly. With Rey's leg thrown over his hips, he was pinned just slightly to the bed, and he shivered as he was pressed down onto the plug. Restlessly, he tried to move his legs and find some relief, but this also did not work—however he moved, he only felt it differently, and it was making him grasp somewhat desperately at the sheets, at Poe, and at Rey's arm—anything within reach.

Poe laughed. "Go ahead and turn on the next one, Rey," he said, and slid down Finn's body, kissing gorgeous muscles, amusing tan lines, and sensitive places (his nipples were unfairly sensitive, as were his ribs) before kissing the head of his cock and sucking gently. "Now, finally, I can live my dream of giving you head until _I_ get tired." He winked playfully and went back to work, pinning Finn's hips firmly to the mattress.

Rey giggled, uninterested in holos even though BB-8 had turned on the next episode, and she grasped both Finn's wrists and swallowed each gasp and moan with a kiss. "We've got you," she murmured, leaning back to take in his widened pupils and gasping mouth with a smile. "Gorgeous. Poe, I'm afraid you're going to have to be punished for not sharing these toys with us sooner... What do you say to punishing our very selfish fiancé, hm, Finn?" But she didn't expect an answer and kissed him instead.

Poe huffed and made an affirmative sound, not taking his lips off Finn's body. When Finn sounded truly desperate—Poe was struggling to suck him properly when all he wanted was to smile and laugh gleefully—their bond was open wide and Finn was already a trembling melted desperate loving Need—Poe reached between his legs to shift the plug, sliding it in and out and around until he found his prostate, making Finn cry out. "Mm," he hummed, his throat vibrating around Finn's cock.

"Please," Finn begged, "Please, Rey—Poe," he whimpered, fighting the grip Poe had on his hips as if that would give him some release. "Please," he said again, like a prayer or praise. Fuck, he was going to die like this—or lose his mind. He'd forget everything but their names and the feel of them and their bond. " _Fuck_ ," he moaned, curling toward Rey.

"Shh, Finn," Rey murmured, as Poe carried on, unhurried. "We've got you. Be still." And Finn _was_ still, then, amazingly, in spite of how mad they were driving him. She liked how different Finn and Poe were, how Finn's will was like iron as he left his hands where she pressed them to the bed by his head. "You're gorgeous," she praised. "And strong, and smart and wise and you give us everything." She leaned in close to nuzzle his neck. "And you're mine," she hummed, that one phrase feeling so good. Someone that belonged to her. And of course Finn belonged to Poe, too, and technically she and Poe belonged to Finn, more totally, in a different way, Finn was the one who brought them together, after all. But those weren't as fun to say, didn't make them both shiver in the same way.

Okay, maybe this _was_ her "kink."

Poe pulled off with a slick pop when Finn actually whimpered and his hips twitched, his cock spurting just a little. He couldn't resist licking it up with a swipe of his tongue, but his jaw _was_ aching at this point, deliciously, and without warning Poe then heaved Finn's legs over his shoulders. "Okay, let's see how loose and wet this plug made you for me," Poe said, biting his lip as he slid the toy out of Finn's body and pressed slicked fingers inside him, testing, teasing. "Ohh yeah, almost there. Maybe after I fuck you we put this back in, leave it ‘til morning, and I don't even have to prep you, just take it out and start fucking you again? What do you think?" Poe had no intention of doing anything like that until they'd talked about it with all their brain cells present, but Poe was reasonably sure Finn liked hearing dirty talk as much as Poe liked saying it. Poe beamed up at Rey, who leaned back to kiss him.

Finn whimpered as Poe pressed slick fingers into him. But he held still, Rey's gentle kisses and soft nuzzles against his neck a maddening counterpoint to Poe's dirty talk and decidedly less gentle hands. Words were not a thing he could manage anymore, but he begged every cell in his body, in the way his muscles tightened and relaxed around Poe's fingers when he stretched him just a little more. He could feel himself building toward that release, but the ring around his cock was holding him just this side of it long after he would have finished ordinarily. He shut his eyes and breathed an incoherent phrase of need and want and love for both of his maddening, wonderful betrotheds.

Poe smiled all the way to his eyes, and Rey's smile bared all her teeth. The noises he was making, little grunts and pleas and whimpers—at one point he whistled lowly, unaware he was even doing it, and Rey and Poe burst into laughter. Poe was _blessed_ with them both, like he had prayed for them to every god he knew of for every day of his life until he met them. That they could switch so easily and be so happy, that Finn submitted so beautifully to them and that Poe could feel so good submitting to them in turn was—was unfair, really. Unfair to everyone else in the galaxy.

Poe was inside Finn before he realized what he was doing, his own need suddenly prickling up his spine. He reached between them to stroke Finn through it, making him cry out and buck and nearly kick him in the head.

Rey glanced at Poe, and laid her hand on the release mechanism. Finn went still and stopped breathing, but she laughed. "Oh no, not yet. Breathe, darling, I've got you. You can wait. You're going to wait, my darling," she purred, tracing her fingernails over his chest and arms (his hands were still where she left them, but fisting the sheets).

"Oh Maker, look at him," Poe grunted, setting up a rhythm that hunted for his own pleasure, but wrist twisting over Finn's cock until Finn was _vibrating_. "He's so _good_. Takes care of people every day and comes home and takes care of us, letting us have our wicked way with him."

"Lets us take care of him," Rey corrected or added, because of course he was doing both, helping them to feel as good as he felt. Everything was hot and white and humming and happy so that when Poe bottomed out and came with a roar it took him a moment to notice the spike in pleasure. Lust coiled in his belly and he thrust again, almost dry-coming _again_ as Rey made Finn wait, wait, and then finally, finally flicked the release on the ring.

Finn cried out—and then he was half-yelling, half-moaning through it as he came so hard and so suddenly that it _hurt_ , but hurt wonderfully, and made his head spin. Rey and Poe were holding him and petting him and soothing him through it, but he only dimly noticed before everything went kind of dark and faint and floaty. He came back to himself many long moments later, opened his eyes, and tried to speak.

It came out more as a whimper.

Poe was laughing, distantly, above him. "Holy mother of meteors, Finno, I think that's a new record," he said, and Rey was laughing, too, while she was cleaning _the wall above Finn's head_.

"I can't even be grossed out by this, it's impressive, actually," Rey laughed, and rinsed the washcloth to wipe their faces and chests and between their legs. She took the toys and dumped them in the sink, for someone (not her) to clean in the morning.

Poe was grinning and kissing across Finn's face, and Rey soon joined him, uncurling Finn's fingers where he still gripped the sheets.

"Love you. That was amazing, sweetheart, darling, my precious pumpkin," Poe moaned, curling around Finn in their shared afterglow as bright as Jakku's sun.

"You're amazing," Rey hummed. "You're both amazing. Letting _me_ control— _that_ —that was—" she was flushed and blushing, and Poe reached across Finn to take her hand.

"So—if I'd have known you'd go for that—"

"Oh, we're definitely doing that again. You still need to be punished," Rey giggled, and it was Poe's turn to blush. He buried his face against Finn's neck and sighed. Rey was tracing her fingernails over their skin and suddenly the room went still, the only sound their breathing.

"Everything is going to hurt tomorrow," Finn said quietly, and he felt Poe smile against his neck while Rey hummed and patted his arm. She switched back to tracing designs on his arm and he sighed happily. "I love you guys."

"Lucky," Poe said to Finn's neck. He hummed and reached for Rey, resting his hand on her knee. "Love you, too," he told her. "Love you both." He yawned and curled his limbs around Finn. "Sorry 'bout m'socks..." he said, but Finn was already snoring gently and Poe was asleep soon after.

Rey stayed awake after her boys had fallen asleep, smiling at their sleepy faces and the way Poe had wrapped himself around Finn. Her heart felt full—these beautiful men were both hers and she was theirs and she'd never even dreamed this life for herself—she could not have. Loving and being loved by one person had seemed unlikely enough. Two was... it was beyond any of her wildest dreams.

She nuzzled each of them, earning a sleepy sweet smile from Finn and a soft, happy sigh from Poe. Then she rolled out of bed, careful not to wake either of them, and padded softly to the bathroom with the vibrator Poe had set aside earlier.

It wasn't that she was trying to hide from them. Only, she was curious, and as supportive as Poe and Finn both were, this was something she wanted to do, at least this time, by herself. Finn wouldn’t know what he was doing and his concern would probably only make her nervous; Poe knew too much what he was doing and he would probably be condescending on accident.  Especially since she wasn't entirely sure what she was doing, despite having read about it, she wanted to do this by herself.

She made herself comfortable on the floor and set the vibrator to the side, because the books had been very clear on one count—if she didn't go slowly, it would be uncomfortable, and that wasn't what she was going for right now. She slid a hand between her legs and just—tried to understand what felt good, and what didn't. At some point her mind started wandering to Finn and Poe, to how they approached sex and how they made her a part of it, letting her tell them what to do and shivering every time she called them _hers_. They _were hers_ , and no one would ever take them away, and if she told them to do _this_  they would probably lose their minds, and it would be both adorable and exciting.

She realized she was panting a little, feeling like nerves had lit up all along her spine and neck and—oh, if one of the boys were to play with her hair _now_ , it would be perfect. She fumbled for the vibrator next to her and flicked it on, touching it to herself and gasping a little helplessly before she remembered—lubricant, the books had said unequivocally—and fumbled in the drawer for that, too.

She took a few deep breaths and settled again, then pressed the vibrator slowly inside herself. Certain angles were definitely uncomfortable, it turned out, and she couldn't go slowly enough. It felt...it felt like the more immediate version of what she felt when the boys were begging for things to go faster and (if it was Poe) really getting into the dirty talk, or to pulling on restraints if he was tied...

Rey wasn't sure when her mind wandered further afield, when she started—daydreaming—but in the way she sometimes became distracted while meditating, she found herself wondering if Finn might also enjoy restraints, and in what situation (other than outright asking) Poe and Finn might _both_ find themselves in handcuffs.

Obviously, the answer was, if they were captured, and Rey had to rescue them. She didn't like that idea and its implications, but if the incident with Poe in handcuffs on the _Finalizer_ had been anything to go by, he would probably be easy to get all worked up. And that would certainly get Finn aroused. She would make sure they were both be safe and sound, unhurt and happy to be alive and together, and then they could all find a quiet place and...and she would make them...no, no, they would _gladly..._  

And she orgasmed so suddenly, thinking of their faces when they both came, of the feeling of them across their bond when it happened, that she didn't realize she was making the same sort of soft, helpless noises they did until she was over the edge, gasping. She shook her head as the last of the pleasure tingled down her fingers, and she shut off the vibrator and the room went oddly silent given the clamor in her mind just a moment before. When she'd mostly caught her breath, she cleaned up, put the toy in the sink to join the others, and washed her hands. She drank some water, too, composed herself, and opened the door to the quiet of their bedroom.

"Rey?" Poe murmured as she slid over them and into her spot in the bed, tangling their limbs and stealing all the blankets. He hadn't realized he'd fallen asleep, but the room was dark and lit only by the soft glow of BB-8's charging port. "Didn' mean to sleep," he slurred, lifting his head.

"Shh, it's all right," she whispered, stroking his hair until he laid back down.

"Was having a nice dream," he said, his smile and words squished against Finn's shoulder. "You saved us. From somethin'. We went to bed. N'handcuffs were involved." He snorted, snuffled, and rolled over. "Think I have a problem."

"If that's true, it's not just you," Rey said, and smiled. "Go to sleep."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Experiencing arousal or orgasm also do not conflict with asexuality." —http://www.whatisasexuality.com/intro/
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please stay tuned for Part 17, wherein shit gets real, and you can always give MayGlenn an early birthday present (its not til Friday) by saying hi in the comments! XD

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for a bit of a wait again, but this is a nice long 50,000 word monster, which we will try to update regularly and which we hope you enjoy! And if you haven't read the rest of _Stars and Skies_ , we hope you'll check out the series.
> 
> Please consider letting us know what you like or what we can improve on in the Comments. You can also come bother us on Tumblr at [Maeglinthebold](http://maeglinthebold.tumblr.com/) and [A-singer-of-songs](http://a-singer-of-songs.tumblr.com/).


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